


Hemoglobin

by CyanideBreathmint



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Allusions to Child Abuse, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gore, Guro, M/M, Sex Work, Stockholm Syndrome, Unsafe Sex, Vampire AU, abuse of adults, actually consensual, although there really isn't anything a human and a vampire can catch from each other, and have bones in their dicks, and it's only going to get worse, at least hux thinks it's dubcon, biology 101 went sailing out of the window way before I started writing this, blood-drinking, by an untrained layman, dubcon, graphic depictions of injuries, highly detailed character narration of physical and emotional violation, how do you roofie a vampire?, i mean seriously don't do what hux does here, improvised medical treatment, learned helplessness, lonely vampire masturbation, mentions of child abuse, mentions of snuff porn type practices, non-consensual blood drinking as a metaphor for rape, power imbalance like whoa, seedy vampire/human sex, seriously these vampires pee, these aren't your garden variety vampires, this is fucked up yo, tooth filing, weaponized loss of virginity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 02:46:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13965687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: Content warning: initial dubious consent followed by full consentContent warning: what appears to be exploitation of a sex workerContent warning: Blood-drinking---Armitage Hux is almost a hundred years old, and it's been a shite existence. Being a vampire isn't as glamorous as you might think. He's lonely, hungry, and picks up hustlers and streetwalkers to assuage those needs. One night he picks up a young man named Ben, who is not exactly what he seems to be.





	1. Chapter 1

The problem with drinking half of his entire week’s blood ration at once, Armitage Hux thought, was that he really, really needed to piss afterward, and piss he did. He stood staring at his own reflection in the mirror as he washed his hands after, growled softly, baring his fangs as he did so. His eyes flashed green as they caught the light, reflected it as a guttural _rrrrrrr_ crawled out of the back of his throat. This was unmannerly, unbecoming. This was not how a civilized vampire carried himself. _Don’t scare the Masses,_ he remembered a tutor telling him at age fifteen, when his thirst for blood had finally made itself apparent, when he had been removed from human schools for a more specialized education. _They need to believe that they’re safe, that our predation affects only others. Feral displays will only inspire fear, not complacency and we want them fat and lazy and content._

But Hux was alone in his home, reveling in its privacy, and he could be as much of a rabid beast behind closed doors as he wanted. Not that he got the opportunity to do so much, in any case. He wasn’t senior or powerful enough to warrant his own Beautiful blood donors, and feeding off fodder in the blood farms he investigated would only earn him a reprimand or dismissal, especially if he fucked up and killed it. 

_There is a craving within us,_ he thought as he came out of the bathroom, back into his bedchamber, _that goes deeper than our hungers, our lusts._ He had been almost cold and lonely enough this evening to go out and prowl the streets for someone. It wasn’t as though prostitutes and escorts wouldn’t take his money, and those sometimes took a little extra payment for an illicit feeding or two. He thought of the bag of high-quality heroin he kept in a drawer beside his clean socks and boxers, sighed. The last boy he hired had refused to shoot up and insisted on leaving, taking his half-payment with him, and Hux had been left cold and alone and empty that evening. No, it was easier to just drink heavily and go to bed with his belly full, imagine how it felt to be replete with life and warmth, and fuck himself with a toy or two. 

_They don’t even know how beautiful they are,_ Hux thought as he climbed into bed, retrieved the items he needed from the top drawer of his nightstand, ignored the holstered pistol resting on top of it. Sometimes he liked to imagine he was human, imagined the warmth flooding naturally through his flesh while he played with himself, fantasized about what it would be like to be wanted — no, _needed_ — by someone else. Sometimes he would wonder what it was like to be one of the Beautiful, being ravished and eaten by a half-starved owner. Intellectually he knew that the harems were gilded cages, that the Beautiful didn’t even have freedom of choice in what they wore, how many times they showered or bathed each day, what products they used. But it was an opulent cage, and the reality television shows always played up the glamor and luxury of being a kept human. 

Tonight he imagined himself as a hustler out on the streets in the summer rain, as he spread and lubricated himself. There would be steam hissing off hot concrete and blacktop with a faint sizzle and the overwhelming, sickening smell of petrichor hanging heavy n the humid air. He would huddle in his jacket, being warm enough to feel chilled, and size up the johns as they drove up by one by one. 

Days were long in the summer, and most customers would want to rent a motel room or bring him back to their places, and he imagined himself getting into the car of a handsome, dark-haired man whose eyes would flash gold in the low light. He thought of what orange sodium lights would look like playing across his client’s olive skin. Hux gasped at the visual as he pushed his fingers more desperately up his own ass, hissed at the pressure of his cock against the heel of his palm. 

Would they even make it back to the bedroom? Or would his client just fuck him over an armchair, his jeans around his ankles. Hux arched softly off the mattress as he pulled his hand free. His fingers no longer felt like enough. He groped for the dildo he had left on the sheets beside him and the bottle of lubricant, anointed the silicone head of the toy with more slippery lube. _He wouldn’t be gentle, not with his hunger,_ Hux thought, and he whimpered alone in the silence of his empty home as he shoved the toy roughly up his ass, savoring the sharp initial pain, and then the stretch of it. 

_Face down,_ Hux thought, _he’d hold me face down._ He rolled over carefully, making sure the toy was still seated securely in him, and then pressed his head into his pillow, let himself groan as he began to work the dildo in and out of himself with his right hand. Fuck me, he thought, shuddering hard against the silicone head of the toy as it nudged his prostate deliciously, _fuck me, Daddy._ In here he was free to be as much as a slut as he wanted, and he shifted onto his heels and rode the toy shamelessly as he tipped his head back, fantasized about the sting of fangs sliding into his neck, of strong hands dimpling and bruising his skin. _What is it like to be that beautiful?_

The thought tipped Hux over the edge and he came with a surprised shout, spilling himself onto his bedsheets. “Fuck,” he breathed, “oh fuck.” He let himself fall to his side, still keeping the toy in him, and then reached down to stroke his still-hard cock. _One of the advantages of my species,_ he thought as he squeezed down on the shaft, felt the rigidity of the _os baculus_ beneath his flesh. At another time this could have jolted him out of his fantasy, but he hungered still, needed more relief than that. 

Now Hux thought of a sharply-fanged mouth nipping softly down on the head of his cock, his blood filling his partner’s mouth hotly as they began to swallow him down, throat working around him. God, he thought, remembering the first time he had done this to someone. The boy had whimpered so softly and prettily, and the taste of him had been exquisite, the salt and iron tang of blood mingled with the thick chlorine smell of spunk. The thought of that sensitive skin slick and dark with blood, creamy white against the red as he came brought him off again as his hand slid frantically down the shaft of his cock. He felt his spunk drip down his knuckles, spread it sticky over his foreskin as he worked just the head of his cock this time, bucked eagerly into his own palm until he spent himself a third time. 

That was enough for him tonight. Hux slumped against the pillows, his hands sticky with come and drying lubricant, and he hissed softly as he pulled the toy out of his tender ass. He thought of changing the sheets, decided that he could do that tomorrow evening after he woke up, before he went in to work. Instead he wiped his sticky hand on the sheets, pulled the covers over himself, and fell asleep. 

***

Evening came mercilessly, inexorable as ever, and Hux groped for his alarm clock as it went off, silenced it without opening his eyes as he rolled out of bed. Last morning’s indulgences had quelled the hunger in him temporarily, soothed him enough that he could go out into the streets without worrying about biting someone in a moment of weakness. He staggered into the bathroom without even looking at his reflection (and he did have one, contrary to terrible old myths and stereotypes) and stood under the warm water for a slow, indulgent shower. The water came down hard, left him gasping as he savored its drum on his pale skin, its wet sluice down his back. 

He dried himself cursorily with a towel, and drops of water ran down his slim shoulders to pool briefly in the hollow of his back as he stood in front of the bathroom sink and mirror. He rubbed juniper-scented grapeseed oil into his cheeks and chin, let the oil do its work on his skin as he brushed his teeth. Blood rotted with a salty, savory stink, and there was nothing more distinctive than its smell on a vampire’s breath. He spat minty foam into the sink, saw it tinged with dark clots of old blood. He picked up his badger-hair brush and began to lather up his shaving soap, brushed it onto his face before he took up his pearl-handled straight razor and tested its sharpness on his thumb. He did not feel the cut as his own blood welled up from it to drip once, twice into the sink. Satisfied, he tipped his throat back and pared away at his stubble, shaking lather carefully off the blade as he went. That done, he washed his face, washed the razor in warm water, dried it with a cloth and oiled it lightly. 

Hux did not dress immediately when he left the bathroom. Instead he took the comforter off his bed and hauled the stained sheets off the mattress, dropped them into the laundry hamper he kept in his walk-in wardrobe. He didn’t bother replacing the sheets - he could take care of that later, when he came home from work. Some other vampires felt that changing the sheets and ironing their shirts were beneath them, and hired human housekeepers. Hux valued his privacy more than his dignity, however, so he continued making his own bed and taking his suits to the dry cleaner himself. 

Hux dressed quickly and perfunctorily - he had maintained a capsule wardrobe of suits and separates for the past twenty-five years, having grown bored of keeping up with mortal fashions, and the formality of business dress was acceptable almost everywhere. His shirts all harmonized with his suits, his ties with his pocket squares, and his cufflinks with his socks, which made it very easy for him to instantly select clothes that would go together. Today he wore a dark charcoal suit with oxblood dress boots, a showy foulard-print necktie in champagne silk, and a pristine white pocket square. His cufflinks were lapis cabochons set in stainless steel. His braces were the same deep blue as the stones in his cufflinks, as the pair of socks he wore, but nobody would see them in any case. He almost never took his waistcoat off at work. Its multiple pockets were just too useful. 

His sidearm was the second to last item he put on, the shoulder holster settling comfortably across his back. He collected his watch, wallet and badge, put those in the appropriate pockets before he checked and pocketed his work and personal phones. Hux was still quite full of blood from last night, so he needed only a simple breakfast, and he could pick that up on the way to work. He checked briefly in the mirror to make sure everything was in place, put on his data goggles and fetched his briefcase, picked up the keys to his car. 

***

The week was a routine one, as routine as law enforcement work ever went, in any case. Hux worked at the Bureau of Loss Prevention, an agency authorized to investigate unusual human deaths independently of regional health and law enforcement jurisdictions. This was to eliminate the possibility of corruption or collusion so that stupid and greedy vampires couldn’t destabilize the power balance in petty acts of tyranny. An individual human was no match for a vampire, definitely, but a single vampire couldn’t best fifty humans alone, and there were roughly 2500 humans for every vampire in densely urban cities like New York or London. 

That meant that his job responsibilities centered on blood farms and the unavoidable spoilage that occurred among the stock. Even the best-run places had trouble with suicidal inmates, although much was done to keep them safe at all times. Those routine investigations were peppered with one or two more interesting cases — a Beautiful blood pet in a vampire’s harem murdered by a rival for her master’s attentions, a man stabbed by his son in a domestic altercation. It wasn’t the most exciting work, but it was steady employment, and most importantly, something to while the nights away with. 

Hux had been around for almost a century and had accumulated a small fortune in that time. He could simply quit and spend his evenings idle, living off dividends if he invested carefully and lived fairly simply, but he did not. His partner Phasma once joked that he wasn’t so much a wolf as much as a working dog — leave him alone with nothing to do and things got fucked up in due course once he got too bored. He didn’t really see it as an insult, as everything she had said was true. The main problem he was running into these nights was that he had been passed over for promotions for the last thirty years. 

It was a common problem in vampiric society. Upward mobility was difficult when one’s elders and superiors didn’t age and didn’t leave their positions barring retirements, accidental deaths, or murders made to look like accidental deaths. Besides, his father was still rather upset with him, and had been since he had turned fifteen and started growing fangs. Armitage Hux was an accident born out of a dalliance, and he had been ignored for the first fourteen years of his life Not every child of a vampire grew up to be one, however. Given the low vampire fertility rate Hux’s father had been forced to acknowledge him after his older half-brother reached the age of 21 without turning. Brendol Hux Jr. had died by his own hand, aged 28, after he had been cheated out of his birthright by traitor biology and chance, and Hux remembered being the only mourner present at his interment. He felt an obligation to be there, being the upstart bastard who had stolen his inheritance, and that was the least he could have done.

It was early, very early just before the gloaming lit the clouds as Hux drove his car slowly along the road, watching the young men and women — humans, all, and they stared sullenly back at him from the parking lot of a local motel. He glanced at painted faces and lean bodies clad in tight clothing, necks all carefully bared to advertise the services they sold. Most of them looked tired. It would have been a long night for most of them this early in the morning. Some of them bore bruises and shallow weeping cuts along their wrists and forearms, on the inner thighs, and Hux’s nostrils flared as he let his lips part, sucked in a breath through his mouth. The scent pits in his palate picked the fragrance up, salt and iron tangy in his mouth, and his cock twitched in response, bypassing cognition and thought. 

And then, a curious absence of blood, just the scent of strong soap and sweat, musk, slight fear, and he turned his head to look, found a young man leaning against the bumper of a car. He wasn’t Hux’s usual type, being broad-chested and tall, but his mouth was a sensual one, his lips soft and full against the angularity of his nose and cheekbones. Waves of dark hair swept artfully around his head, drifted against the battered shoulders of his leather jacket, and Hux knew then that he wanted this boy, wanted to sweep him up and devour him, leave him ravished and panting. He eased up on the accelerator, braked gently and rolled his window fully down. 

“Hi,” the young man said softly, levering himself upright from the bumper he had been resting his weight on. His voice was soft, deep, velvety. 

“You’re new,” Hux said, glancing hungrily at the planes of his face, the way his neck gleamed against his night-black hair. 

“Yeah,” the hustler agreed, “I am.” He had to bend at the waist to lower himself to Hux’s level, and his t-shirt hung a little loosely, allowing Hux a glimpse of that muscular chest. 

“Get in,” Hux told him, and the young man paused with his hand on the door handle. 

“I’d prefer it if you got a room here,” he said, his voice steady even as doubt flickered across his narrow face like a ripple in a pond. He was good at dissembling, if anything else. And his request was perfectly reasonable, a basic security precaution. 

Hux had always preferred the privacy and comforts of his own home. He thought to the small bag of heroin that he kept in a drawer, wondered if this boy could be persuaded to try it, just once. Those strong, leather-clad forearms had never known needle tracks, Hux was sure. “No,” he said, “my place. I’ll pay double.” 

The young man bit down on his full lip, and the dent in his flesh from his teeth sent a jolt of lightning tingling down Hux’s spine, a familiar blend of arousal and hunger.

“Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?” Hux asked him, watching the decision tip this way and that in that expressive face, flickering in the dip of an eyelid, a tongue-tip against his upper lip.

“Yes,” the boy said, after a beat of silence. 

It was time to nudge the decision the way he wanted, Hux thought.“I might,” he said, “but only a little.” This tack often worked better than outright denial, after all, he was going to take this young man home, fuck him, and drink a few mouthfuls of blood in the process. It would hurt, even with the pleasure to outweigh the pain. 

“All right,” the young man said, and Hux wanted to grin in feral triumph, show his sharp teeth off to the world, but he did not. 

***

The young man said his name was Ben, and Hux didn’t quite care if it was a real name or not. It was a sharp one-syllable word he could hiss in the boy’s ear while they fucked, and it sounded better than “hey, you”. 

“Have you eaten today?” Hux asked him. It was always something he asked the streetwalkers he picked up, if only because he didn’t like feeding on underfed, undernourished humans. They tasted different, always slightly thin and bitter like bad coffee. 

Ben glanced up at Hux under his long eyelashes, twitched a little at the question, and then said “It’s okay. I’m fine.” 

“You’re not going to faint on me?” Hux pressed gently, and Ben shook his head, silent, anxious. “Relax,” Hux told him. 

“I’ve never done this before,” Ben said, the words tumbling out of his mouth as though jolted out of him. 

“Really,” Hux said, his voice and expression a study in nonchalance. No point in scaring the boy any more than he already was. 

“Yeah.” Ben’s blush was delicate, pink showing on his ears and up his neck, and Hux’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. 

“You have no reason to trust me,” Hux said after another beat of silence, “but I do want you to enjoy this, too.” _You taste far better that way,_ he thought but did not say. 

Slowly, silently, Ben’s hand crept over to rest briefly over Hux’s as he switched gears, his touch a hot promise of breath and life and sweet blood thrumming just beneath that pale skin. It would look like garnets and rubies spilling forth from Ben’s veins, and the visual took Hux’s breath briefly away. 

***

The first hints of false dawn were spreading across the sky by the time Hux brought his prize home. He wanted to maul Ben in the doorway, start stripping him the moment they stepped over the threshold, but he was very aware of Ben’s nerves, of the fear-smell coming off him, and he restrained himself from doing so. Instead he entered the sanctuary of his bedroom and left the door wide open, sat down on the edge of his bed instead. Passive. Nonthreatening. Ben stepped past the doorframe, his broad shoulders filling it momentarily. 

Ben glanced briefly at the fittings and furniture in Hux’s bedroom; the opaque drapes over dark-tinted windows, a hardwood floor, Hux’s broad low bed. He paused in front of Hux, unable to face the avidity in his gaze. “Could I use your shower?” he asked softly, the words hissed out of his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing briefly as he swallowed. 

“Of course,” Hux purred, sensing the resignation and acceptance in Ben’s thoughts and in his body language. Such a morsel. “Let me get you a fresh towel.” Ben shrugged his leather jacket off to reveal the short-sleeved t-shirt he wore under it, the muscles in his arms bunching under the thin fabric. He grabbed the hem of the shirt without hesitation, pulled it off to reveal a pale expanse of chest, a firm, hard belly, and Hux had to hold himself back when he stepped past Ben to fetch a fresh towel from a drawer in his closet. 

Their fingers brushed when Hux passed Ben the towel, and Hux watched the changes in his face, studied the hollow of spine just above the low waistline of his jeans as he stepped into the bathroom. Hux only smiled when the door swung shut behind Ben, his fangs out and eager. He busied himself with the slow process of undressing. He took off his Oxfords, flexing his toes in quiet satisfaction before he pulled his socks off. His coat went on the proper cedar hanger for it, and he rolled his knitted tie up and placed it in the drawer where it belonged. His cufflinks were next, and then he folded his sleeves carefully up his forearms, fully aware of the image he would present to Ben once he emerged from the bathroom. 

Hux sat easily on the edge of his bed again, crossed his legs as he inhaled the scent of Ben’s skin borne upwards on wisps of hot, steamy air leaking under the bathroom door. He thought about taking his shoulder holster off, and then decided against it. He wanted Ben just nervous enough to be uncomfortable, just afraid enough to acquiesce in the face of Hux’s own insistence. Stripped of his shoes and coat, Hux would look slim, lithe, not physically powerful, but the sidearm in his holster would underscore his power and authority, especially here in his own bedroom, in the heart of his lair. It was a delicate act, weighing Ben’s sense of self-preservation against the desperation of his situation, and a manipulative one, but Hux had spent decades of his life perfecting it. 

The bathroom door swung open several minutes later, and Ben stepped out of it with a towel around his shoulders, his skin still damp. He was gloriously and magnificently naked, and a small drop of water rolled down this chest to parallel the linea alba, vanishing in the dark tangle of his pubic hair. He stood very still, his eyes wide with shock and alarm when he noticed the sidearm in Hux’s shoulder holster. “Are you a cop?” Ben asked, his mouth trembling as that broad chest heaved. 

“Not exactly,” said Hux. That was true. “I work Loss Prevention.” The agency had a good reputation among most of the human populace, seeing as they spent most of their time investigating deaths and murders, and very little time actually interacting with humans who weren’t part of active case. Their homicide work painted them as heroic, interested in the wellbeing of humans even though their main mandate was to police other vampires lest they upset the balance of power, and Hux did not like dispelling that illusion. People needed a sense of comfort to keep going, night after night. 

Ben looked down at his own feet, and then back up at Hux’s face, silent and uncertain. Hux had to remind himself to look into Ben’s face when he did so — his cock was beautiful, thick, and already beginning to darken with blood. “Come here and sit with me,” Hux said with exaggerated casualness, “I’m only going to bite you a little.” 

Ben crossed the four feet of floor between them and sat down where Hux had indicated, and Hux reached up slowly and gently to brush a damp lock of hair out of Ben’s dark eyes. He felt Ben’s pulse quicken at his temples, let his hand fall lightly to Ben’s shoulder. Hux let his touch linger softly on the firm flesh of Ben’s upper arm, and then he reached out with both hands to pull Ben’s face closer to his. 

Ben’s mouth was hot and salty against Hux’s own tongue, tasting of tears and fear and a faint cloying sweetness that Hux assumed was the last traces of a mint or some other sweet meant to freshen the breath. Ben’s hand crept up Hux’s hip to settle at the small of his back as they kissed again and again. Hux tried hard not to scratch Ben’s tongue or lips with his own fangs — he wanted to save that for last, but Ben bled anyway, the faintest hint of iron in his spit driving Hux’s ardor to further heights. 

“This isn’t so bad, is it?” Hux asked Ben softly when they had to part for air. 

“No,” Ben murmured, tried to smile. The expression was replaced with a sudden shiver of pleasure as Hux palmed the underside of Ben’s cock, savored the warmth and heat of him. He would be so hot inside, and soft, velvety, Hux thought as he let Ben buck into his hand, smearing pre-ejaculate all over his palm. 

“It’s okay,” Hux murmured, as much to lull Ben into further passivity as much as to reassure him. Ben’s hot perfect mouth was seeking out the corner of Hux’s jaw, the shell of his ear, and he was content to remain where he sat as Ben explored him. “Would you like to fuck me?” he murmured as he took a handful of Ben’s hair, pulled him possessively close again. 

“I — “ Ben paused, a slight panic flickering into his gaze. “I wouldn’t know how.” 

“Never fucked another man before?” Hux asked him, matter of factly. He’d seen it all through his near-century of life, was personally rarely surprised by his human partners.

Ben averted his gaze in faint shame. “Not anyone, actually,” he said, and Hux read the sudden anxiety in his face easily. Ben wanted to do well despite the sordid, transactional nature of their fuck, and Hux felt a vague warm tenderness stirring just underneath his lust. 

_A virgin,_ Hux marveled, _that’s something new._ His feeding preferences usually brought him in contact with prey who at least knew what to do when turning tricks. “You do know the thing about virgins is just an old myth, right?” The honorable thing to do would have been to offer Ben the chance to leave, drive him back if he got cold feet, but Hux was too hungry to care at this point. He wanted this boy one way or another, in every way he could have him. “Lie down,” he told Ben, as he stood to take his shoulder holster off. That went into a locked drawer in his nightstand, then he unbuttoned his waistcoat, took it off and shrugged the braces off his shoulders. 

Ben stretched himself down in the middle of Hux’s bed, looking flushed and nervous and ripe for ravishment, and Hux decided to just keep his shirt on — he did not want to take the time to undress fully with this beautiful creature in his bed. He let his trousers and boxers slide off his narrow hips and stepped out of them, climbed back on the bed to half-straddle Ben’s waist. 

“Look at you,” Hux breathed as he brought his face close to Ben’s, “you’re blushing.” He shifted his position easily to sit astride Ben’s hips, let the curve of Ben’s cock rub up against the cool skin of his ass. 

Ben let out a shuddery sound in response, bucked instinctively upwards against the contact, and then he keened wordlessly as Hux began to tease his nipples, stroking and then pinching them with clever fingers. _Careful,_ Hux thought as he lowered himself to all fours, _you don’t want to tease him too much or he’ll come right now._ Ben’s hot hand slid up beneath the hem of Hux’s shirt, rucked it up to expose part of his back, his thin flanks, the hollow of his belly. “I want you,” Ben said as Hux bent his head to the breadth of his chest, touched his tongue to a droplet of sweat. 

“I like that,” Hux grinned, showing his fangs fully, the famine behind his eyes as he knelt here surrounded by the hot intoxicating scent of Ben’s blood beneath his skin, in his veins and arteries. Ben’s pupils were blown with endorphins, and he shut his eyes willingly as Hux drew a fang carefully and gently across his left pectoral. “You taste so good,” Hux whispered after he had spent a few moments lapping at the small drops of blood that had seeped from the wound. Ben did taste good. His blood was robust, strong, savory with true vitality and health — nothing Hux did not expect, seeing how fresh and raw Ben was to his profession. He hadn’t spent enough time out on the streets for it to wear upon his body, not yet.

This small taste of Ben’s blood was enough for now, and Hux bit down on his own tongue, let his blood fill the cut on Ben’s chest. The small wound began to narrow and fade, and Hux helped the process along by licking gently at it until the skin was new and whole and untouched. “You don’t have to keep your eyes closed, you know,” Hux said as he leaned over to reach for the lubricant in the top drawer of his nightstand. “I have better table manners than that.”

“Mm,” Ben grunted. He opened his eyes briefly to glance again at Hux, who was busy smearing lube all over his right hand, and then he whimpered loudly when Hux closed his slippery fingers around that magnificent cock, bucked up into Hux’s fist. 

“Not so fast,” Hux said, teased him with just the palm of his hand, “I don’t want you getting too excited right now.” He rose to a kneeling position over Ben’s hips and slicked lube between his thighs, started fucking himself with his fingers. Ben propped himself up on an elbow and took hold of Hux’s cock, squeezed carefully down, and Hux shuddered at the sensation. “Careful,” he breathed as Ben began to stroke him slowly, tentatively, “you don’t want to be too rough with my baculum.” 

“Is that what it is?” Ben asked as he loosened his grip, and Hux thrust up into his touch once, twice. 

“That’s bone, yes,” Hux managed before he shuddered again, bit back on a groan. 

“So you can — “and Ben flushed even redder then, “you can stay hard for as long as you want?” 

“Pretty much,” Hux said, chuckled, “but you’re not going to get any of that until I’ve had my fill of you.” Ben’s gentle strokes made it so much easier for Hux to loosen himself around his own fingers, diffused a little of the burn. “Are you ready?” he asked Ben, meeting those dark eyes. 

“Yes,” Ben whispered, and then he went very still as Hux took hold of his cock and began to lower himself upon it. _Fuck, but this boy is thick,_ Hux managed to think as he forced himself to relax around the head of Ben’s cock, his glans shiny and slick with lubricant and pre-ejaculate alike. Ben thrust instinctively upwards against Hux’s asshole, and Hux sucked in a long breath against the stretch, let Ben do as he pleased for the moment. 

“Do you like this?” Hux asked Ben, who arched back against the mattress beneath him, rocked mindlessly up into Hux’s ass as he seated himself fully atop Ben’s hips. 

“Yes.” Ben was shivering, holding himself so very still as he bit down on his lip again, and Hux made his gaze focus on Ben’s face, on that wet, exquisite mouth. He didn’t want to drink too much, not until Ben had come, at least. They always tasted better with endorphins in their systems. 

“Good,” Hux said. “Now start moving.” 

Ren thrust his hips experimentally upwards, a movement that provoked a whimper out of Hux. “Like this?” he asked between pants as he began to find his rhythm. 

“Yes, oh, fuck, I’m going to be feeling this tomorrow,” Hux groaned as Ben grasped his hips with strong hands, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise if Hux had been human. He didn’t mind Ben’s eager roughness. It wasn’t as if the boy could injure him that badly. Ben fucked him with careless abandon, stretching him to the point of pain and filling him with aching heat, and it was all Hux could do to lean back into Ben’s movements and take every glorious inch of him. 

Ben was definitely a virgin, Hux thought against those strong, inexpert thrusts, and he growled deeply at the pain and the pleasure intermingled, at the increasing speed of Ben’s frantic movements. “I’m close,” Ben whimpered, “so close.”

“It’s all right,” Hux reassured him. He didn’t expect Ben to last all that long, honestly, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t enjoy the boy in other ways afterwards. “You’re going to be so hot in me, when you come, just filling me up with your spunk. Do you want to see it drip out of me?” 

“Fuck, oh fuck,” Ben gasped, brow furrowed over closed eyes, and there he was driving his cock up and up and up, as his hips twitched in messy reflex, and Hux held himself still against that pleasure/pain with an effort of will, let Ben finish however he wanted. 

Hux didn’t let Ben recover from his climax. He only rolled him swiftly over, heedless of the come smearing across his sheets. “My turn,” he whispered possessively, intimately in Ben’s ear, and smiled coldly at the sounds Ben made when Hux dragged his lube-slick fingers up the hot cleft of his ass. “You’re going to be sensitive,” Hux warned him, “it’s going to feel like a lot.” Ben stiffened when Hux pushed a finger up his asshole, made a small sound half muffled by the pillow beneath his head. Hux could feel Ben’s spunk dripping wetly between his thighs as he spread Ben just a little too roughly. The sounds he made were delicious, arousing, and Hux felt his belly growl, cold and empty over the hot ache of his own cock and balls. 

Ben shivered silently as Hux finished preparing him, and Hux saw Ben glance over the plane of his own shoulder to see what he was doing. “You’ve had your fun,” Hux told him gently but firmly, “and now it’s time for mine.” Ben’s ribs heaved suddenly with a long breath, and Hux caressed the back of his thighs with his wet slippery fingers. Ben shuddered at the touch, buried his face in the pillow again, and then he went very still as Hux pushed slowly into him. Ben was as hot and soft as Hux had hoped, and Hux felt the tension in Ben’s belly and spine as he held himself still. 

“Did you —“ Ben said, but most of the sentence was muffled by a pillow. 

“You’ll have to say that again,” Hux said. He began to rock his hips slowly against Ben’s ass, not so much thrusting as much as just grinding insistently into him, letting him get used to the sensation. 

“Did you like it when I fucked you?” Ben managed to say out loud, and Hux rewarded him with a long, slow thrust. 

“I enjoyed it greatly,” Hux said, pulling himself out again. “Did you have fun?” 

“Yeah.” The word turned into a low moan as Hux gave Ben another hard thrust, ended in a whimper as Hux pushed down between his shoulder blades so he had to tilt his hips at an angle. 

“Then you know how good this feels for me,” Hux said. He let his movements speed up, savored the slick velvety warmth of the boy’s asshole in smooth, lazy strokes. “You’re getting used to it, aren’t you?” Ben was relaxing around him, beginning to move with him in anticipation of the next thrust, and Hux could sense that he wanted more. 

“Yes,” Ben whimpered as Hux shifted the angle of his own hips, pressed the head of his cock against the approximate location of Ben’s prostate. It was as though Ben had been electrocuted. He held himself rigid against the sudden burst of sensation and keened aloud as Hux began to fuck him in earnest. 

“I’m going to fuck you until you’re hard again,” Hux promised him, “but I won’t let you come this time, not all over the sheets, you wasteful boy.” Ben let out another eager sound, as Hux began fucking him faster, more roughly. “You’re going to come in my mouth instead.” Ben was young and strong, and it didn’t take all that much work for Hux to fuck him back into hardness. Hux laughed sharply then, gathered Ben into his skinny arms and pulled him upright, Ben’s back to his chest as he thrust up and up into the sweet nirvana of his ass. 

“Don’t you dare,” Hux panted in his ear as Ben reached down to touch himself, swatted Ben's fingers away from still-sticky shaft of his cock. “I want to taste you,” Hux growled, and Ben let his head tip back on a limp neck, made another delightful sound of need and pleasure. It would be so easy for Hux to just press his face to the side of Ben’s neck, bite through skin and artery to the source of bright blood beneath, pressurized, spilling into his mouth in hot gouts. It was far too risky a manner of feeding no matter how exhilarating it was. Hux had investigated deaths where vampires had fucked that up, and the accidental nature of the incident had not granted them immunity against charges. 

Instead Hux bit down on the slope of Ben’s trapezius muscle, sucked a bruise into Ben’s heated skin as small drops of blood welled out of the shallow fang-marks in his flesh. The taste was heady, exciting, musk and sweat and thrumming with endorphins, and Hux did not manage to hold back against all that sensation. He came hard in Ben’s tight ass, held himself still through the sweet aching spasms of his climax and caught his breath before he began fucking Ben again. 

“Please,” Ben begged him, and Hux eventually let Ben take hold of his right wrist and guide his hand to the shaft of his cock. Hux did not take hold of him, only held his palm against the sensitive underside of Ben’s cock, the roughness of his frenulum and raphe. Ben bucked up against the palm of Hux’s hand, rutting bestial and eager like a wild animal. 

“Slow down,” Hux warned Ben as he pushed himself deeper and deeper into Ben’s asshole, sensing the boy’s desperation. He closed his fingers tightly around the base of Ben’s cock, felt those balls tightening against the edge of his hand. Ben was so tense around him, so exquisitely tight, and Hux bit down again on Ben’s shoulder as he came a second time. It was so good to spill himself into someone warm and willing, so good to just close his eyes and give himself over to sensation. Pleasure zinged hot and electric up his spine to reverberate against the back of his skull, the base of his spine, and then there were the aftershocks of his climax as his balls contracted. 

Hux came back to himself with his face pressed against the side of Ben’s neck, looked down to make sure he hadn’t bitten into the carotid artery before he let the boy go. Ben slumped bonelessly against the mattress, the small wounds in his shoulder leaking onto the sheets, but Hux paid them no mind. They weren’t serious injuries, and he could tend them once he was done with Ben. “You’ve been so very good,” Hux panted, as he rolled Ben over onto his back. “Let me do this for you.” 

Ben was pleasure-drunk at that point, the head of his cock slick and wet with copious pre-ejaculate, and Hux bent his head to take the tiniest taste of him, inhale the bleachy scent of spunk lingering still from Ben’s first orgasm. Ben’s hands closed carefully around the sides of Hux’s head, long pale fingers tangling in red hair tinted darker with sweat. Hux let Ben pull impatiently at him before he bit gently down on the shaft of Ben’s cock, just below the sensitive ridge of the corona. Ben gasped at the tiny pain, and then let out a long eager moan as Hux began to swallow around him. 

Ben tasted so good — each drop of blood seemed to pop on the tip of Hux’s tongue in a bright salty burst of iron, and it mingled with the slippery sweetness of pre-ejaculate. Hux continued to suck down hard, swallowing again and again as Ben’s blood began to fill his mouth. It didn’t take that much, frankly, not with the head of Ben’s thick cock taking up so much room, and Hux found himself being pushed down, and hard, as Ben fucked his mouth. 

He didn’t mind it, not at this point, anticipated only the shudder and stillness of Ben’s climax, the yolky, slightly bitter taste of his spunk. Hux’s belly didn’t quite fill with warmth, he hadn’t nearly drunk enough blood for that to be the case, but the hunger in him relented, receded into the depths of his mind, where his instincts lived. It took longer for Ben to come this time, as expected — he had learned to pace himself slightly better this time round, and Hux was content to let Ben fuck his throat in hard, frantic thrusts. 

Hux knew the moment Ben was close, felt the building tension in Ben’s thighs and belly, and he pulled his head slightly back, wanting to taste every drop of Ben, blood, spunk and sweat alike. Ben flooded Hux’s mouth with come as he climaxed, silent again as he arched off the mattress, and Hux swallowed, swallowed again until Ben’s cock stopped twitching in his mouth. He pulled back, bit down on his own tongue and licked at the punctures in Ben’s flesh until the wounds began to seal. 

He dropped on the bed next to Ben, dizzy with exertion, and pressed his cold brow to Ben’s bicep. Maybe Ben would stay the day, and Hux would have someone warm to hold until he had to wake up on Saturday evening. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, out of nowhere, as Hux tried to recover from their intense fuck. 

_Why?_ Hux wanted to ask, but could not. His tongue was numb, his fingers heavy. _You drugged me,_ he tried to say, realized that the sweet taste in Ben’s mouth had been a poison designed only to harm vampires. A poison that worked only if the drugged human were fed on. That explained the shower. Ben had needed the time to dose himself privately. Hux reached clumsily over to his nightstand but did not manage to grasp the drawer handle, knew that it was futile because he did not have the coordination to unlock it anyway. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said again, kissing Hux tenderly on the forehead. “You were really good, and I mean it. But I have to do this.” 

Hux wanted to laugh, managed only a weak gurgle until Ben turned his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke on his own spit. _Nearly a hundred years and this is what I get, foolish enough in my appetites that someone could prepare the perfect bait._ Ben was stroking his head gently, shushing him as he tried to struggle. “Shh,” Ben whispered, “just let it go. Just let it happen.” 

The world began to shrink in Hux’s vision, the walls closing in on him like that last dot of white on an old television screen, just before it winked out entirely. _Why?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Gore/guro/graphic descriptions of injury  
> Content warning: non-consensual blood-drinking as a metaphor for rape  
> Content warning: Stockholm syndrome  
> Content warning: Definite power imbalance  
> Content warning: Human on vampire dubious consent  
> Content warning: tooth filing
> 
> \---
> 
> Hux begins to understand at last what it's like to have the tables turned on him, to be prey instead of predator. And Ben, beautiful, enigmatic, terrifying? Ben is somehow neither and both, a contradiction in a world of eat and be eaten.

Hux dreamed of rain, not the steamy urban showers that hissed on the blacktop, nor the desultory autumn drizzles of half-melted slush. No, he dreamed of a pure, cold rain, water running across the face of the earth, soaking into ground and turf to nourish plants and trees and fill brooks and streams. He dreamed of his breath blooming across a windowpane as he watched from the inside of a flat, the sound of a television behind him oh so long ago. 

“Come and eat your breakfast,” someone told him, “perhaps the rain will have stopped when you’re done.” A woman’s voice, oddly disconnected, breaking up in his ears as though the memory were a corrupted file spitting static, nonsense. 

_Come and eat._

_Eat._

Hux twitched himself awake, sucking in a sharp breath. Pain burst dazzling in his head as his eyes registered light. It wasn’t sunlight but his nictitating membranes came down nevertheless, tried to veil his pupils in self-defense. “You’re awake,” someone said. Ben. Hux turned his head to the side, tried to sit up, but couldn’t. It wasn’t that he hadn’t the strength or the coordination at this point. No, he couldn’t move because he was shackled to something. A hard bed, perhaps, he thought as he registered the roughness of a linen sheet beneath his back and hips. There was something more, something slightly slippery beneath him too, and he wondered if it was a plastic sheet, wondered if he was about to be dissected here and now.

“What did you do to me?” Hux wanted to ask Ben, but the words came out in a dry, rusty croak. He was spreadeagled, naked, wholly exposed to the cool air. A rough stone ceiling above him, an incongruous opal glass chandelier that flickered with candlelight, and the wet-earth smell of running water underground. A cave or some kind of other chamber blasted out of the stone, a dry mine, perhaps. 

Ben did not answer. Instead he took an exquisite porcelain cup up from a trolley beside him and placed a bending straw in it, held it up to Hux’s face. “Drink,” Ben told him softly, confidently. “You’ll feel better when you do.” The warm light played beautifully over the bones of his face, limned those sharp cheekbones and that aquiline nose, but Hux was not in any mood to appreciate any of that.

The liquid in the cup smelled stinging, astringent, herbal and it tasted worse, but the first swallow banished the dryness in Hux’s throat, and he didn’t realize he had drained it until he heard the straw sucking hollowly at the dregs in the bottom. “What did you do, Ben?” Hux asked again. 

“I drugged you,” Ben said, as though that explained the entire situation. A faint savory smell tinged the air and roused Hux’s appetite, brought a qualm of nausea too. Ben was no longer wearing his jeans and t-shirt. He was now swathed in coarse black robes that made him look smaller, paradoxically, despite the bulk of the fabric. His hands were gloved in supple black leather, their movements oddly delicate as he surrounded Hux with fruit and flowers. Grapes and frosted currants, lotus blossoms, poppies and others Hux did not recognize. 

_I’m not in a bed,_ Hux realized dimly as Ben laid a large abalone shell full of caviar at his left side. That was followed by a dish of tiny quail eggs, boiled and halved and deviled. Belon oysters on the half shell, nestled in trays of ice, translucent slices of cured meat, cheeses. _I’m on a table. A dinner table. I’m the centerpiece._ “Why are you doing this?” Hux asked Ben, shivered as a silver plate brushed against his skin. Foie gras, he saw, skewered on sugarcane and wrapped in caramel floss. Silent, efficient servants assisted Ben as he worked.

“You chose me,” Ben said. “It isn’t your fault. It was just happenstance.” He finished laying the appetizers out and placed plates — six to Hux’s left and one to his right. “My master dines with us tonight, and it is my turn to wait upon him.” The fish course followed, braised turbot and scallops, and then a variety of removes, smaller entrées that would not be replenished as they ran out. Chinese soup spoons full of sorbet, roasted squab, braised beef morsels, each topped with half a morel mushroom, spiced sausages roasted with pears.

“I’m the main course,” Hux said, understanding now what was happening to him. He wanted to struggle against his bonds, but he knew it would be futile. _I am still a son of the house of Hux, by-blow though I am,_ he told himself, _I must face this with dignity._ Dignity. As though Ben had permitted him any. 

“You’re not the main entrée,” Ben said softly. The tone of his voice was perversely reassuring even as he swabbed Hux’s chest and belly with vodka and then drizzled him with a warm sauce. There was the smell of juniper berries and shallots, lemon zest and a shocking heat against Hux’s skin as Ben laid rare, pre-sliced pieces of venison on top of him, fanning the slices out attractively. “More like the punch course, actually.” Two large soup tureens followed, one between Hux’s elbows and the other between his knees, both very hot but not quite touching his skin. 

“Your master is a vampire. Like me.” Hux said. He was suddenly shivering, his teeth chattering. It wasn’t the cold — he was surrounded by hot food that radiated heat against his bared flesh. It was pure, unadulterated terror. He would have soiled himself, he realized, if there had been anything left inside him, but Ben seemed to have taken care of that, too. The sauce on Hux’s chest and belly ran down his sides in fat drops, pattered loudly on the plastic sheet laid down to protect the linen tablecloth, and he almost laughed in a fit of panic and hysteria.

Ben’s fingertips were gentle on the inside of Hux’s right arm as he fastened a tourniquet around his bicep and felt for a vein, tapping lightly on the crook of his elbow. “He is,” Ben agreed, “but he is nothing like you. You will see.” More alcohol and the sharp sting of a cannula, a length of IV tubing that ended in a valve. Hux could not fight his fear then, and he broke, trembling as he began to weep. “Shhh,” Ben said again, laying his fingers across Hux’s mouth to quiet him. “We’re not cannibals. And if we were, I certainly wouldn’t eat you alive.” He poured a measure of wine into another cup, took a capped syringe from one of his pockets, and squeezed the blood in the syringe into the wine, placed another straw in the cup. “Drink,” he said.

“What is this?” Hux whispered, staring up into Ben’s bottomless dark eyes, that narrow lupine face. _He was my prey, and now I am his._

“A minor tranquilizer, for your fear,” Ben held the cup close to Hux’s face, as before, turned the straw in his direction. “It won’t kill you.” 

“Is this meant to be a mercy?” Hux asked Ben, his voice slightly stronger as he began to accept his fate.

“If you want to think of it that way,” Ben said softly, not unkindly. “My master prefers his meals uninterrupted by fits of despair.” 

Hux closed his eyes and felt his tears roll against his temples, and then he turned his head and drank. The wine was a good one, dry, not overly sweet, and the blood mixed with it was strong and savory, a flavor he knew. _Ben,_ Hux thought as he swallowed slowly, _this is Ben’s blood._

“Good,” Ben murmured as he took the cup away and placed it back on the trolley. “Now for the last touch.” Hux looked up at Ben, turned his head limply as the drugs began to take hold. Ben held something pale, something that branched in points. A crown. A crown of antlers wrapped in ivy. He set it gently over the top of Hux’s head, leaving it standing on the tablecloth, barely disturbing his hair. “A red hart,” Ben said, satisfied as he smoothed Hux’s hair away from his forehead, “a royal meat, fit for my Master’s table.” 

***

Ben took care of Hux afterwards. Carried his limp form, swaddled in a blanket, out of the dining room and out into a hallway that he did not recognize. He took Hux to a small cell and laid him down on the cold floor, and then retrieved soap, a washcloth, and a basin of water, and began to wash him clean. Hux lay atop the stained blanket, weak and faint from blood loss and unable to assist or resist Ben’s ministrations. He was panting and breathless and he flinched now and then, as and when he had the strength and wit to register Ben’s touch on his skin. 

“It’s okay,” Ben told him, “you’re okay. A little feeding and you’ll be right as rain.” 

Hux shut his eyes and turned his face away from Ben. The word _feeding_ brought up another pang of terror, another bubble of nausea, and he didn’t want to cry right now, not while Ben could see him. Everything went gray, and then black, and he found himself tucked into something warm when he opened his eyes again. He was still in the small room Ben had brought him to, still naked and vulnerable on the floor, but he was now lying atop a pallet with soft blankets tucked over him. Someone had taken the basin and washcloth away and brought a tray to replace it, a tray with a covered bowl and an IV bag of rich dark blood placed side by side on its top.

“You’ll need this first,” Ben said softly as he popped the IV bag, slipped the end of the tubing between Hux’s dry lips. The blood was human, cold and a little stale, but still fresh enough to carry sustenance and vigor. Hux sucked desperately, greedily at the tube as the blood ran in little rills over his tongue. He swallowed again and again until until he had drained the bag entirely, the nausea in his gut melting away to be replaced by hunger. “Enough,” Ben told him as he pulled the spent bag and empty tubing away, “any more and you’ll be sick from it. The sodium citrate.” 

The blood had helped, but Hux was still in no condition to escape. His strength was wholly depleted and he wasn’t even sure if he could stand up if he tried. “That thing you told me,” he said instead, glancing at Ben, who had taken the lid off the bowl. “About being a virgin. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“No, actually,” Ben said. He dipped a spoon into the bowl and scooped up some congee, brown rice cooked to creamy softness with dried scallops and oysters and shreds of chicken. “Open your mouth.” 

Hux complied. The porridge was hot and salty, laced with sesame oil and pepper, and its heat began to banish the chill that had taken hold deep within Hux’s body. “How do you do this,” Hux asked, referring to the honey trap and the ensuing sex, the drugging that followed, “and stay a virgin?” 

“I never went that far before,” Ben said simply. He fed Hux another mouthful of porridge, and another, pacing each spoonful so that Hux could eat slowly without choking. “The others all wanted to feed first, so I didn’t have to keep the act up for long.” 

_The others._ Ben had done this before, then, and it made so much sense, how he had calculated his image, his behavior with cold precision so he could entice someone like Hux. And then he wondered where the others were, and shuddered at the thought. “So I was your first lover,” Hux said instead with a small, bitter laugh.

“You are,” Ben said, as Hux ate a little more porridge. He used the present tense, as though there were any chance that Hux would continue the liaison after a betrayal like this.

Hux laughed again, the sound still bleak. “You told me I was really good, afterwards. Before I passed out.”

“You were,” Ben said with a faint smile, “I am not dissatisfied.” He paused to smooth Hux’s hair away from his brow again, soft glove leather against clammy skin. “This is not your fault, Hux. You were just unlucky. Five minutes could have made a difference. You could have gone home with someone else. Probability is cruel, sometimes.” 

“Is it?” Hux asked, knowing the answer already. He was still shivering despite having been fed. It was as though the blankets didn’t exist at all. Intellectually Hux knew that both blood and food were insufficient to fuel a complete recovery, that he would need more time to rest and recuperate.

“Get some sleep,” Ben said as he put the empty bowl back down on the tray. To Hux’s surprise he pulled the blankets briefly away and crawled into the pallet next to him, boots, robes, and all. Ben was strong and warm through his layers of clothing and Hux closed his eyes as he let Ben pull him close so that they tucked against each other like spoons in a drawer. “Don’t be afraid,” Ben said into the back of Hux’s head, “I’m here.” 

The words did not reassure him — not when he was faced with the reality of the situation, but the touch did, as did Ben’s heart thumping slowly against his back. “Go to sleep,” Ben said again, and Hux did.

***

Sleep did not dull the horrors trapped within Hux’s skull. It only sharpened their edges as the drugs began to wear off, and they flashed like a dark landscape lit by lightning in his mind. It was as though he were experiencing dinner all over again. Fine silverware chimed on porcelain as six figures sat facing one, Ben standing and light on his feet as he poured wine and served various courses. 

Hux twitched and kicked in his sleep at the memories flickering to life as he slept — six other robed humans, terrifying in their somber kindness as they ate with perfect manners, their gazes hot and avid and hungry for something other than food. No, they hungered for their master’s approval. He sat on the other side of the table, gnarled and arthritic and curled in on himself in his chair, the ancient of days, a vampire so old that he had begun to visibly age. His pale skin was papery, desiccated, stretched over rents in flesh and bone alike, but his voice was deep and strong, his icy gaze like a floodlight as he studied Hux up and down, savored the naked vulnerability of him. Ben attended him throughout the meal, helping him eat morsels of food when his withered hands would not obey him. 

“An attractive vintage, Kylo Ren,” he remarked to Ben, at the beginning of the meal, Ben, who dipped his head at his master’s approval. “What is it, a Hux?” 

“Yes, Master Snoke, a Hux from 1983,” Ben murmured, fawning, deferential. Snoke ran a sharp fingernail lightly along the flesh of Hux’s flank, drawing blood, and the cut stung from the salt and the lemon in the sauce covering his skin. 

“Bold,” Snoke said after he had touched his nail to his tongue, “but not unrefined. Not overly sweet. Excellent work. Will you broach the vessel for me? Decant a little and let it breathe.” 

Ben picked an empty crystal decanter off the table and removed its stopper; placed the valve end of the IV tubing in its mouth. Hux’s blood came trickling out in a small stream, coating the sides of the container. Hux knew intellectually at that point that Ben hadn’t drawn enough blood for him to feel anything, but an edge of panic bit through the fuzzy detachment, and he turned his head away from the right side of the table, away from the decanter full of blood. “It’s okay,” Ben told him in a near whisper after he was done, the reassurance cruel in its sincerity. 

All assembled paused to watch their master take his second taste of Hux’s blood, stared fascinated as color began to seep back into those papery lips and sunken cheeks. “A small pity,” Snoke said after his first sip, “that we have the son rather than the father, but the blood breeds true in this case.” He drained the glass and motioned for a refill, and Hux chose not to look at Snoke’s face or Ben’s hands working to drain him further. No, he watched Snoke’s hands instead, watched as the twisted fingers began to straighten and heal, the skin shrinking around new flesh as it turned ruddy. 

_Humans can’t give him sustenance any more,_ Hux realized, wanted to whimper but couldn’t. _That’s why he had Ben — no, Kylo Ren — drug me and bring me back. Only vampire blood will satisfy him, now._ His capacity for coherent thought splintered, flaked away as Snoke drained successive wineglasses, as the six other humans finished their meals and began to look restlessly at each other, at Hux, at their emptied plates. _Ren._ Hux thought as the ceiling began to blur in his vision. _The original root of the name Renfield. They’re all Rens. They’re all Snoke’s retainers._

“This is perhaps enough for tonight,” Ben murmured to his master at some point in the meal, and Hux was fascinated how Snoke looked at this point. He was no longer the tottering ruin he had been before dinner. No, he was now a silver-haired man just past his middle years, tall and trim and sanguine in cloth-of-gold, his red tongue darting out of his mouth to chase a stray drop of sauce. “Such a fine vintage should be savored over successive nights.” 

Things didn’t end as Hux had remembered them this time. Instead, Snoke stood up and looked hungrily down at Hux’s ribs, at his raw, unprotected belly. Hux gasped, pulled against the restraints as sharp nails opened his skin and muscle. _So much pain._ Hux screamed as he felt strong fingers pierce the muscle of his diaphragm, choked and gurgled as his own scant blood welled up from his torn gullet to fill his mouth. 

“No,” Hux managed to whisper, before he choked again, and there Ben was, turning his head gently to the side, to keep his airway unobstructed. 

“Shh,” Ben said with that same detached calm, and Hux made himself focus on those dark eyes, that fierce narrow face. “It’s okay.” 

“No,” Hux gasped again, terribly aware of blood-slick fingers deep inside him, a violation intimate beyond his imagining as Snoke’s hand began to close around his still-beating heart. 

“Just let it go,” Ben said, stroking Hux’s head with gloved hands, smoothing his hair away from his eyes as his vision began to dim. “Just let it happen.” 

***

Hux kicked and struggled against the blankets, against the solidity of Ben’s chest and arms as he fought his way through the last vestiges of this terrible dream. He whimpered aloud, involuntarily, and placed a hand against his belly, stifled a sob when he found his flesh whole and unmarred. _It’s a dream,_ he told himself as he lay back down, his head swimming with nerves and revulsion, _just a bad dream,_ and then Ben’s arm snaked easily around his waist, making him flinch.

“You had a nightmare,” Ben said. He kissed Hux on the back of his head, the gesture at once comforting and nauseating, and it was all Hux could do to hold himself still against Ben’s chest. 

“I did,” Hux whispered. He lay on his right side, facing the stone wall of his cell, wishing he could leave it at that. But it wasn’t just a nightmare, wasn’t just his fraying mind playing tricks on him. He could close his eyes to his surroundings, but Ben’s presence was a constant reminder that something was wrong. Hux did not turn to look when Ben climbed out of the pallet they shared, steadfastly ignored the rustle of cloth behind him. Instead he thought of a small flat in Dublin 9 decades away, the cold rain pouring sharp and cleansing upon the upturned face of the world. It calmed him a little to think of what life had been like before he turned fourteen, to remember the sound of his mother’s voice. Hux no longer remembered what she looked like — it had been so long since he had left her. 

“It’s okay,” Ben whispered as he slid back into bed next to Hux, stripped to the waist. The promise of warmth and sustenance in Ben’s flesh made Hux’s belly roil uncomfortably, and he turned to face Ben, his heart ablaze with fear and agony. 

“How can you tell me it’s okay?” Hux asked him, trying to prop himself up on an elbow and failing. “You drugged me, you took me away — “ he tried to say, and then fell silent as sobs began to rise out of his chest, tears of confusion and grief running wet down his face.

“I know, Hux,” Ben said, “I know what you’re going through.” There was a terrifying nothing in Ben’s eyes, lurking just beneath the life and animation in him. It was as though he had stared too long at the abyss, until the darkness beyond had crept into his heart and soul in tiny, insidious little whispers. 

Hux didn’t want to be held and comforted at this moment, not by Ben, who had betrayed him, but it was at this point the only respite he could find. He did not resist as Ben kissed him softly and gently, tried to close his mind to the utter wrongness of his situation. It was good to press his face against Ben’s shoulder and inhale the salt and musk of his scent. In this way he chose denial, chose the lie in order to remain sane in the midst of this insanity. 

Ben’s kisses were still a little stiff, slightly experimental, and Hux found himself leading Ben in a dance of tongues, the both of them panting softly against each other in the dark. This was slower, more exploratory than the fuck they had shared before, during Ben’s first time, closer to the drawing of an uncharted map instead of outright conquest. It wasn’t as though there was a clear winner in either case — they both played the part of conqueror and conquered for each other. 

Hux wanted to bite down on Ben’s shoulder, sip a few forbidden mouthfuls of blood to assuage his weakness and hunger, but there was a wrongness in his mouth as he ran his tongue along his teeth. He did not have fangs any more. Or rather, the teeth themselves were still there, but they had been painstakingly filed down. He closed his eyes and shuddered, sobbed against Ben’s hungry mouth at the sheer humiliation of this, of the negation of his very nature. “Not now,” Ben murmured after a brief pause for breath, “not now. I’ll let you have a sip later.” 

“Please,” Hux begged, ashamed at his desperation and the junkie whine in his voice. Yesterday — no, he wasn’t sure how long ago it was, he had no sense of time in here — he had been poised, in charge, believing that he was manipulating Ben the whole time, but now the tables were turned, and he resented it as much as he needed it. Hux parted his thighs willingly for Ben, sucked greedily at the salt and sweat of his fingers. Ben unbuttoned his trousers, let them slide off his bare hips, and he growled in appreciation as Hux pulled his face closer, his fingers knotted in Ben’s dark hair. 

They ground slowly against each other, the hollow of Hux’s hip slippery with sweat and pre-ejaculate, and Ben bore eagerly down on him, the broad muscular weight of his body solid and steady. Ben’s sweat dripped onto Hux’s upturned face, rolled down his cheek like a teardrop as his eyes stung from the salt. “You feel good,” Ben whispered, panting hot against Hux’s ear, “you feel so good like this.” 

“I don’t think I can go any further,” Hux gasped, keened softly as Ben shifted a little to give him more friction, more sensation in this desperate frottage, “we don’t have any lubricant.” 

“It’s okay,” Ben said, bit down on the shell of Hux’s ear just hard enough for it to hurt, and the pain intermingled with the pleasure made him arch up and whine as the sensation blotted out conscious thought. “It’s good, isn’t it?” Ben asked him, when he could open his eyes again. 

“Very,” Hux whispered, shivered at the sensation of Ben’s body grinding down on his. Ben’s cock was so hot and hard against his skin, slippery with pre-ejaculate. “Don’t stop,” he begged breathlessly, when he felt Ben slowing down, sensed the tension in Ben’s back and shoulders. 

“I’m getting close,” Ben protested, sucked in a loud gasp as Hux thrust back up against him.

“It’s okay,” Hux said, his own breaths coming out hard and heavy, “it’s okay. Roll over, I want to taste you so badly right now.” Spunk wasn’t blood, wouldn’t satisfy Hux’s hunger in any way, but it was still a vital fluid, rich and replete with life and flavor. It would have to do for the time being. 

Ben rolled easily over on top of the pallet, his trousers still hanging about his knees, but he made no move to kick them off. Hux knelt carefully between Ben’s shins, bent his head to Ben’s eager cock and took just the very tip of him into his mouth. Ben hadn’t been lying, he was close, and Hux groaned, tried not to choke as Ben forced his head down, drove his cock further in. 

Ben’s pulse beat hotly against Hux’s tongue and his lips grew numb as he drooled around the shaft of Ben’s cock. He did not resist, wasn’t strong enough to fight back, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to at this point. “You’re so good around me,” Ben said, his voice breaking in the dark between hard eager pants, “such a good boy.” 

All was taste and touch and smell as Hux closed his eyes, appreciated the wiry tickle of Ben’s pubic hair on the tip of his nose, his eyelids. The taste of salt grew stronger in his mouth as Ben got closer to orgasm, the slit of his meatus narrowing as he tensed in anticipation. Ben’s musky sweat lingered in Hux’s nostrils, and the tangy, bleachy taste of come was like a sacrament upon his tongue. He swallowed against its stickiness in the back of his throat, swallowed again, and then Ben was grasping him by the hair, strong fingers pulling painfully as he tugged Hux level with him. Ben kissed Hux on the chin, his pink tongue darting out to catch a string of spunk that Hux had missed. 

“Thank you,” Ben murmured against Hux’s ear before he leaned in to nip at the edge of Hux’s jawline, let his hot wet mouth leave a cooling trail of spit on Hux’s sweaty skin. “How about you? How do you want to finish?” 

“Your hand is perfectly fine,” Hux groaned, breathless, tired and pent-up, “or mine, I just need to —“ 

“Let me,” Ben said, and Hux hissed sharply, arched his back off the pallet when Ben took careful hold of his cock. It didn’t take Ben long to slick the skin of his palm on the sensitive head of Hux’s cock, and he smeared slippery pre-ejaculate down the shaft of Hux’s cock as he closed his fingers slowly, gently. “Like this?” he asked as he gave Hux an experimental stroke, and then another. 

“Yes,” Hux breathed, and then he shut his eyes to the world around him, to the cell of his captivity. He gave himself over to sensation instead, gasped and bucked and shuddered as Ben learned how to touch him and reduce him to a panting, shouting mess. Ben’s fingers were strong and good, his palm broad, slightly rough with calluses — he had not been idle in his service to his master. “Please,” Hux begged, his request aimed at nobody in particular. Ben was already doing everything right, giving Hux everything that he needed and more. 

No, Hux had meant the words for himself, ultimately. He begged his body to come faster, to obliterate his thoughts and fears in the temporary death of orgasm. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Ben’s touch, let himself immolate on the pyre of his own desires. There was a faint tickle on the skin of his belly, his hip, and Hux fought to stay still amid all that sensation, shuddered in a sudden surprised thrash as Ben closed the scalding heat of his mouth around the head of Hux’s cock. The sensation was sudden, unexpected, breathtaking, and the slight scratch of Ben’s teeth on that delicate skin brought him to the very brink, left him trembling and very still as he gasped a warning out to Ben. 

“Ben,” Hux breathed, “I’m going to —“ 

That was all he managed to say, because his world fractured into fragments afterwards. There was nothing but the white-hot bliss of his cock in Ben’s mouth, of those lips slippery with spit and spunk sliding back down the shaft as though unwilling to give him up. It was too much, far too much as he shivered against the spasms in his loins and also just enough as Ben continued to lap greedily at the sensitive ridge of flesh ringing the head of his cock. 

Hux came a second time, static drowning out the darkness behind his eyes as he let go of consciousness and identity and gave himself purely over to sensation. Ben’s mouth worked around his cock as he swallowed again and again, and Hux only whimpered once, gratefully as hearing and touch failed him, as he fell into a warm haze of bliss. 

***

Hux woke again, his head throbbing as he registered his thirst, and he could taste the last traces of Ben’s spunk in his mouth. He turned on the pallet to find himself alone. _It must be evening by now,_ he thought, and then realized that it was pointless. He had not seen the moon and the stars, had no way of tracking time in this room without windows. Hux’s chin itched and he ran a hand experimentally over it, found his stubble heavy enough that he was sure he had lost two, probably three days between the drugs and whatever else Ben’s master had done to him. 

Nobody was going to be worried about his whereabouts over the weekend. He was a solitary vampire, preferring to stay out of politics whenever possible. It was why he made no attempt to engineer a promotion at work — promotions meant more politics, and he had grown bored of all that even before he had turned forty. Phasma would notice if he didn’t show up on Monday evening, though. She would try to call him on his phone, and then go to his home to check in on him. Ben could have left the doors locked and the security on, but Phasma had the authorization and equipment to bypass those. 

And then what? She would probably know something was wrong if Ben had taken him without bothering to put his clothing back on its hangers. Hux had been her lover over a brief five years, before they both agreed that it was easier to work together if they didn’t also fuck each other. She knew his habits intimately and was his best and oldest friend. Loss Prevention would take his vanishment seriously, and the search could already be underway, if he was that lucky. 

The pallet was the only furniture in the cell, the toilet a steel-covered hole in the floor. There was nothing Hux could hang himself from, nothing he could harm himself with. He had seen places like these, visited them frequently in his line of work. _Blood farms._ A faint wave of shame and revulsion welled up in his empty belly, sent bile rising in his gorge as he thought about the drugged dead-eyed humans restrained in their beds, or permitted exercise or recreation only under strict guard. 

It wasn’t as though the majority of the population went into blood farms, though. Most humans lived pleasant, uneventful lives, safe from predation under the auspices of Loss Prevention, and many aspired to become Beautiful pets because of the glamor associated with the harems. They were all bled only once a year, for taxes, on a staggered schedule to keep the supply constant. The humans in blood farms were normally a danger to themselves or others, and would have been duly executed a century and a half ago. Executions were wasteful, though, and you couldn’t take them back if it turned out the evidence was flawed. Consigning a troublesome human to a blood farm, on the other hand, was something that could be theoretically rescinded if the evidence ever exonerated them. Hux had never encountered such a case in his entire career, and he had spent more than sixty years working for Loss Prevention. 

_I’m a hypocrite,_ Hux thought with a bleak laugh as he sat cross-legged on top of the pallet, one of the blankets wrapped around his shoulders like a robe. The other one covered his legs. _I ignore things like this when it happens to the humans bled to feed me, but it’s cruel and unusual once it happens to me._ He was culpable, yes, but then so was every other vampire alive today, and he was curiously angry and ashamed that he had been singled out for this oddly fitting punishment. _Why me? Why not anyone else?_ Hux wondered, though he knew the answer. _It’s because life is under no obligation to be fair._

The door to his cell rattled once, and then swung silently open to reveal Ben standing in the doorway, the breadth of his chest and shoulders blocking the watery light in the hallway outside. “You’re awake,” he said, sounding as though he were genuinely pleased that Hux had found the strength to sit up in bed. 

“I thought you’d left me, once you had your fill of me,” Hux said bitterly as Ren stepped further into the room. The door swung shut behind him to leave them both locked in this cell. 

“I wouldn’t do that,” Ben said, shrugging away the rancor in Hux’s voice. “You’re my guest. Did you rest well?”

“I don’t know,” Hux said, and that was an honest an answer as he could give at this point. He was thirsty and hungry, still weak and dizzy from the blood loss he had suffered last night, and he hated the weak relief he felt when he had seen Ben in the doorway. _I shouldn’t want to see him, this is Stockholm syndrome talking._ And yet Ben had been his only comfort and respite in this place where nothing made sense. 

“I was thinking you might want a bath and some breakfast, maybe even a shave,” Ben said evenly as he crouched so that he was eye to eye with Hux. “I could provide you with all those, if you wish, but you have to promise me that you’re not going to try anything stupid.” 

“And what counts as stupid?” Hux asked in a bitter gout of humor, shaking his head at the wave of dizziness that followed. 

“Trying to hurt me or yourself,” Ben said reasonably. “Trying to escape. The first two are counterproductive, the third impossible.” 

“I’m supposed to be smarter than that,” Hux sighed, resigned to his fate. He would have been capable of fighting Ben in his usual shape, but he was likely to embarrass himself if he did anything now, weak and depleted as he was.

“You are,” Ben reached out to smooth Hux’s unruly hair from his brow, his gloved fingers warm and sound, and Hux found himself leaning into the tiny gesture like a cat. “So what is it? What’s your answer?” 

“I won’t try anything stupid,” Hux sighed.

“Very good,” Ren said. 

***

Hux wasn’t sure what he would find at the end of his short journey. Ben led him up roughly-chiseled stairs and through another artificial cavern until he reached a doorway in a hall full of doors. They were all spaced evenly apart like apartments in a block. The door opened to reveal an austere suite of rooms, and Ben pushed him gently through the doorway before shutting and locking the door behind here.

The air here was cleaner, fresher than it had been in his cell, the ventilation was clearly better, but he was also surrounded, enfolded in the scent of Ben’s skin and hair. These were his quarters, then, Hux thought, and then his knees began to wobble as he folded on the spot. Ben caught him just in time and propped him upright until he found his equilibrium again, then led him carefully to an adjoining bathroom. 

There was a sharp resinous smell in the bathroom that mingled with the same strong soap he had smelled on Ben’s skin that first morning, when everything had been acceptable, if not entirely normal. Ben helped Hux keep his balance as he shrugged the blanket off his shoulders and climbed into the low steel tub along one wall. Everything in here had a spartan, military aesthetic, a look that was already old before Hux had been born all those years ago. 

_This is some kind of bomb shelter,_ Hux thought, registering the details in his memory, glancing up at the bare piping and the painted metal walls. _From the old war, before we revealed ourselves to the survivors._ This place probably dated to the 1950s, if not before, one hundred and twenty years ago. The steel of the bathtub was cold against his exposed skin, but Ben turned a tap, and then another, and water began running from a pair of spigots into the tub. 

The water felt shockingly hot at first, but Hux knew that it was he who was cold — vampires ran cooler than most humans in any case, and he was definitely too starved and weak to maintain anything warmer than room temperature. This bath would help. So would the breakfast Ben had promised. Ben pumped liquid soap into the bath as the water ran, let it froth up into thin suds, and there it was again, the soap that lingered on Ben’s own skin and in his hair. 

“Is this comfortable?” Ben asked him, before he took a glove off and trailed his fingers in the water to test its temperature. 

“Yes,” Hux sighed. He shivered briefly against the humid warmth, and then managed to relax as his flesh soaked up the heat. Ben took off his other glove and dropped his outer robe behind him on the linoleum floor, fetched a washcloth and then began to scrub gently at Hux’s skin as he relaxed into the water. “Why do you bother to do this?” he asked Ben during a pause in the scrubbing, as Ben wrung water out from the washcloth into the tub, drops landing plish and plash to ripple the soapy water beneath.

“To be kind to you?” Ben asked, and Hux closed his eyes as Ben wiped briefly at his face, the washcloth satisfactorily stiff and warm against his skin. 

“Yes,” Hux murmured. His voice was still hoarse from dryness, and he wanted to giggle at how he was now sitting surrounded by water that was now too dirty to drink. 

Ben did not answer him. “Don’t move,” he said instead, before he draped the washcloth over the side of the bathtub and vanished into the antechamber of his suite. Hux thought of the things in a bathroom he could hurt himself with. Hanging would take too long. A sharp razor could work, but Ben would hear the water sloshing if he tried to stand and search the cupboard and drawers, and he sighed in resignation and waited only for Ben to return. 

It didn’t take long. Ben brought a small tray into the bathroom and put the tray down on the bathroom counter, filled a cup with something fragrant and green-smelling. 

“What is it?” Hux asked him as he knelt to proffer the cup, and then took it and inhaled the steam when no answer came. It was tea, green tea, grassy and subtly tannic on the nose. 

“You’re dehydrated,” Ben said. He watched as Hux sipped at the hot tea, drained half the cup in one long swallow. 

“Thank you,” Hux said, unsure of what else to say as Ben refilled the cup, placed it on the floor within Hux's reach. The tea somehow quenched his thirst more than water would, and he could feel a sweetish aftertaste lingering on his palate. This wasn’t just any green tea — it was top quality stuff. Hux drank more tea when Ben held the cup to his lips again, felt it warm him from the inside as the bath did from without. “That’s a good tea,” he said as Ben took the empty cup away, sighed softly. “You have good taste.” 

“I do,” Ben agreed simply, confidently, “and you have a good palate. That’s Dragon Well, from Hangzhou.” 

“Why go to this length for me?” Hux asked him, slightly amused, charmed despite the awful truths that remained between them, outside this room. 

“It’s what I have at the present time,” Ben shrugged. He stood up and undid the cuff of his left sleeve, picked something up from the bathroom counter. A straight razor. And not just any straight razor — it was Hux’s own pearl-handled straight razor. “This is really pretty,” Ben said, as though he had been holding a painted fan or a lacquered comb in his hand. 

“I hope you know how to shave me with that, or all your effort to keep me alive will be wasted.”

“That’s not what it’s here for,” Ben said seriously. He turned the underside of his wrist up and cut down, not across the blood vessels, watched as it pooled rich and red against the blanched-almond paleness of his skin. It was like rubies, like garnets spilling from a tray, each drop catching the light before it splattered on the floor, and Hux shuddered with longing at the side of it. 

Ben held his open wrist to Hux’s lips. “Drink,” he said. A fat drop of blood splashed in the bath, its red diffusing to brown, and Hux could not hold himself back any longer. He licked a drip of blood up the side of Ben’s wrist, closed his mouth around the cut and swallowed quickly. The blood came in a slow, steady flow — Ben had been careful to cut through a vein instead of an artery, and he began to stroke Hux’s hair with his right hand. Ben’s fingers lingered on Hux’s bright hair in a slow, gentle caress as Hux fell to. 

This was the taste of life, of lust, of everything Ben was, strong and vital and salty on the tongue. Goosebumps rose on Hux’s bare skin as he drank and drank, and then vanished as his gut began to warm in response to the blood. The feral part of him wanted more, wanted nothing more than to rip his way down Ben’s pale forearm and wring his arteries out into the bathwater, wanted to revel in gore, but he couldn’t, even if he did decide to cut loose. His fangs were no longer sharp enough to pierce skin, not without his having to gnaw like a dog. 

Ben let Hux suckle at his wrist for a few minutes, his gaze soft and indulgent before he pulled away. “Enough,” he said, and then rose up on his knees as though to stand and find bandages for the cut. 

“No,” Hux said, “no. The razor. Here.” Ben picked up the razor and looked steadily into Hux’s face, drew the blade whisper-soft across his lower lip, and then extended his bleeding wrist again to him. Hux grasped at Ben’s arm with both hands, pressed his mouth to the wound on Ben’s wrist, smearing it with his own blood. Hux kissed the broken skin, lapped away at their intermingled blood until there was nothing left but a silvery scar which would fade by tomorrow. Hux licked his own lips as Ben pulled his wrist away, found that the shallow cut in his lip had healed over. 

“Thank you,” Ben said. He put the razor away where Hux couldn’t reach it and re-wet the washcloth, wiped the blood off Hux’s chin with a no-nonsense swipe. “Much better,” he said afterwards, and Hux could not help but agree.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Non-consensual blood-drinking as a metaphor for rape.  
> Content warning: Extended focus on the effects of physical/emotional violation of boundaries.  
> Content warning: Learned helplessness  
> Content warning: Character recollects and relates childhood abuse.  
> Content warning: Character mentions snuff in the context of non-consensual sex and blood-drinking, but they manage to escape from the situation.
> 
> \---
> 
> Hux fights the onset of Stockholm syndrome with his knowledge and training, but he becomes dependent on Ben, nevertheless. Ben confides in Hux, revealing the horrors of his past. Snoke has lunch in the worst way possible.

Ben did not return Hux to his cell when breakfast was over. “You’ve been good today,” Ben said, as he toyed with the remains of his simple meal — eggs scrambled with spinach and chorizo on wholegrain toast, a banana and hot coffee. The coffee was dreadful, instant stuff, but it was hot and warmed Hux’s belly. 

“You wanted me to be,” Hux said. He had been vaguely surprised when Ben had allowed him silverware for this meal, but also decided not to question it, because hot scrambled eggs would have been an ordeal to eat without the proper utensils. Ben had allowed him clothing as well — black trousers and a white shirt that fit him well, but no shoes. 

“I did,” Ben favored Hux with a tiny, empty smile, “but I also appreciate your cooperation.” 

“So what happens now?” Hux asked, feeling the dread start to pool slick and cold in his belly again, “you tell me I’ve been a good boy, and then you take me downstairs and put me in that cell again?” 

“That’s one possibility, yes.” Ben pushed his chair up and collected the dishes and utensils, dumped them in the sink in his small kitchenette before he refilled the coffee mugs for the third time. He drank his black, but had thoughtfully left a carton of milk and packets of sugar on his small dining table for Hux’s convenience. 

“What are the others?” Hux asked Ben as he stirred sugar into his cup of coffee. It was no substitute for blood, and Hux was still wobbly and depleted. He would need to feed more to fully recover, even if the thought of feeding left him feeling vaguely nauseous from fear and unease.

“What just happened was a test,” Ben said, entirely too reasonably, “I wanted to see if you’d behave if I gave you the opportunity not to.” 

“What other options do I have?” Hux asked him, the bitterness creeping back into his voice despite his best efforts to dissemble. “I’m not strong enough to hurt you right now, you’ve made it very difficult for me to hurt myself, and as you said, escape is impossible.” Hux’s hands started to shake, and he put his coffee cup down before he spilled any on himself.

Ben reached over to Hux, enfolded Hux’s right hand in his left gently. “I can let you live here with me, if you promise not to do all those things,” as though the situation he had placed Hux in were sane and reasonable. “You won’t have freedom of my quarters all the time, of course. When I’m away I’ll have to confine you to your own bedroom. But there’s a bed, and books, and a small desk. And hot baths, as long as I’m here to supervise.” 

_He’s trying to make me dependent on him,_ Hux thought, _but there are still things I can learn about him that I won’t have access to in that cell._ “Won’t your master call you to account, if you favor me like this?” Hux asked Ben, probing gently for more information. 

“Master Snoke doesn’t care what I do as long as you’re in a fit condition when he calls for you. I can be as kind to you as I want. And I want to, Armitage Hux. I’m not an asshole.” Ben stood, his half-empty cup of coffee wholly ignored, as he took Hux’s chin in his right hand, tipped his face up to the sterile fluorescent lights overhead. The gesture was at once possessive and pitying, and Hux remembered then what Ben had said to him after the nightmare. _I know, Hux. I know what you’re going through._

Hux had taken it initially as just cruel comfort, an attempt at psychological manipulation, but something clicked in his head, and he realized that someone had once hurt Ben very badly. Had locked him up, had used him until such a state of affairs was his idea of “normal”. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was absolutely certain of his intuition in this moment. 

“Who did this to you, Ben? Who taught you how to do this?” Hux asked in a nearly soundless whisper, shivered as Ben let go of his right hand, closed the fingers of both hands around Hux’s throat. He tried not to flinch, tried to sit still as Ben tightened his grip ever so lightly, as though he were palpating Hux’s neck for swollen glands. _He could choke me out quite easily,_ Hux thought, was forced to stare up into those dark eyes, that dead stare. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. He leaned in to kiss Hux on the mouth, and Hux tasted salt on his lips and tongue. It was not the salt of blood or spunk, nor was it a ghost of breakfast. No. Those were tears that Hux tasted in Ben’s spit, washing over his velvety tongue.

“What happened to you?” Hux asked again, pushing at Ben’s boundaries, to see how far he was permitted to go. _I need to take his measure. I need to know how to nudge him if my only jailer, because he’s the only link I can weaken in this setup._

“That’s enough,” Ben said, his right hand tightening in warning around Hux’s throat again, and Hux bit down on what he wanted to say, made himself look into Ben’s eyes instead. Ben’s fingers closed enough for Hux to feel the pressure on his trachea, and Ben’s eyes were bright and wild and terrifying. “No more questions.”

***

The next few days passed in a blend of tedium and terror. Ben’s comings and goings gave Hux an idea of the passage of time, at least, and that was something he could use. His bed wasn’t much — a metal frame holding a mattress, sheets and a blanket, but it was more comfortable than the pallet he had slept on in the cell, and best of all, it had been assembled with bolts and screws. Hux had crawled under his bed one of the times Ben locked him in for his own safety, and loosened a screw from the frame. It hadn’t destabilized the bed much, and he had used the tip of the screw to scratch a tally mark into the wall before putting it back where it belonged. Hux had done this five times so far, which led him to believe that he had spent a week in captivity, counting the two or so days he had lost on the drugs. 

There were a desk and a chair in the room, and Ben had thoughtfully brought Hux a large cardboard box of hardcopy books. They were dog-eared and smelled musty from mold and long storage, with foxing on the pages and faded inscriptions on the flyleaves. Second-hand books, perhaps even third-hand. The books were a motley collection — Louis l’Amour Westerns rubbed up against potboilers and romances, and while it wasn’t Hux’s usual literary fare it was better than nothing. 

There was still no set routine to Ben’s days save for meal times. Some days he spent his entire time with Hux, either reading from his own selection of books or listening to old music played on a still-functioning record player. Louis Armstrong, Bird at Birdland, Woody Guthrie. Hux was locked up on other days, his meals consisting of sandwiches, chilled blood packs, and bottles of water left on the desk in his room, at least until Ben returned and saw fit to let him out.

Ben had first left him alone three tally marks ago. There had been no explanation, just Ben coming in to say he would be away, letting Hux out to use the bathroom, and then locking him back in with his books and rations. Hux had waited until Ben’s footsteps receded, until he heard the faint chunk of the suite door lock engaging, and then he had curled up in his bed and wept like a small child. He cried himself to sleep, and woke up puffy-eyed when Ben came to let him out for dinner. 

Hux had desperately needed that time alone to try and process everything that had happened to him — as nice as Ben was, Hux was still a captive being held against his will, and he needed to remember that Ben was as much an enemy as his master Snoke was. And yet something in Hux’s belly seemed to unclench when Ben was there, and he had not resisted Ben’s kisses and caresses the two nights that Ben had come to his bed. Hux told himself that it was part of the strategy, that the sex gave him an opportunity to break down some of Ben’s defenses, but he was also keenly aware that Ben was one of the few bright spots in his horrific situation. He was becoming dependent on Ben, like it or not. He could only hope that the trauma bond worked in both directions.

Hux left a fresh tally mark on the wall just after he had woken, that making a total of six, when Ben knocked gently on his door. He twitched and crawled hurriedly back into bed, pulled the covers over himself as the key turned in the lock. 

“Hello,” Ben murmured softly as he stepped into Hux’s room, sat on the edge of his bed and took his hand. “Did you sleep well?” Ben’s fingers were warm and strong, and his hair was still damp, and he wore only the long-sleeved shirt and trousers that were usually hidden by his robes. He looked as though he had just come from a shower or bath, and Hux closed his eyes to savor the smell of salt and musk under the fragrance of his soap. 

“I don’t know,” Hux said after a few moments of silence. Ben had cut himself shaving today, and the faint savor of blood stirred his hungers. He wanted to push his face against Ben’s neck and lick at the fresh cut, worry at it with his now-blunt teeth until he got a taste of blood. Ben stretched himself out on the bed beside Hux as though reading his mind, and Hux buried his face against Ben’s neck, then tipped his chin up to brush his lips against Ben’s chin.

The cut was still fresh enough to be oozing plasma, and Ben did not object when Hux put his tongue to the clear drops, licking them off the forming scab. “Looks like you slipped,” Hux murmured into Ben’s ear. 

“It happens,” said Ben. “C’mon.” He drew a capped syringe from his left trouser pocket and popped the cap off, held it as he would a pencil. “Open your mouth,” he told Hux.

“What’s that?” Hux asked? The syringe was full of blood, but he wasn’t sure what else Ben had spiked it with. 

“Just a tranquilizer, to keep you calm,” Ben said, and Hux shut his eyes and took a long breath, braced himself internally before he let his lips part, just a little. He was fairly sure Ben could have made him choke it down one way or another, and so he did not resist.

“That’s good,” Ben murmured gently, softly, and Hux felt his substantial weight shift on the bed. The threaded plastic tip of the syringe brushed against Hux’s lower lip, and then a drop of blood landed on his tongue, salty and strong. “There you go,” Ben said as he fed Hux the contents of the syringe, “just stay still and let it circulate a little.” 

Hux kept his eyes closed as a pleasant numbness crept in on the edges of his consciousness, the very ends of his fingers and toes, the tip of his tongue. “What is this for?” he asked Ben, glad that he wasn’t slurring too badly. 

“Just part of the routine,” Ben said. Hux felt a strong arm slide under his shoulders, found Ben helping him up into a sitting position. “I need to give you a bath,” he said seriously, and Hux could not find the will with which to refuse. He let Ben pick him up like a toy, lay relaxed and passive in Ben’s muscular arms as he was carried from his room to the bathroom. 

Ben sat Hux down in the bathtub, still warm and damp from previous use, and slowly divested him of his clothing, and it was pleasant to just lie there as warm water began to fill the tub. Ben did not use the usual soap this time. Instead he poured in some fragrant oil that smelled clean and bittersweet and resinous. Myrrh and frankincense, labdanum, and gum benzoin. Hux felt something click dully in his brain as he recognized the perfume. He had smelled its last lingering traces the first time he had been in Ben’s bathroom. Dread bloomed slowly in his gut, but the sensation was attenuated by the warm haze filling his head. 

“I remember this smell,” Hux said dully, numbly. “The first time you gave me a bath.” Last week, Hux wanted to say, but he retained enough presence of mind not to do so. Ben didn’t need to know that Hux could now track his days. 

“My Master dislikes the smells of strong detergents,” Ben said simply. He used a small basin to scoop up water from the bath and poured it over the top of Hux’s head to wet his hair properly, followed that with a grassy-smelling liquid that lathered gently. “Do you like that?” Ben asked Hux as he began massaging Hux’s scalp with his broad hands, working the suds in, “It’s a solution of soapwort. People use it to clean antique textiles and lace, it’s supposed to be very gentle on the skin.” 

“It’s just a garnish,” Hux said bitterly, laughed despite the soothing pressure of Ben’s hands in his hair. “Just to make me look and taste better.” Ben did not answer. He only washed the suds out of Hux’s hair with more warm water from the tub and used a washcloth to scrub at his face, the sides of his neck, moving down to his arms and chest. 

“There we go,” Ben murmured at last, and then there was the sound of water running down a drain as Ben pulled the plug from the drain. “Stay there,” he said, “I’m just getting a towel.” 

***

Hux was fairly sure he could have walked out of Ben’s suite with some assistance, but Ben had not even risked that. He had donned his robe and gloves after dressing Hux in another spotless white shirt, another anonymous pair of trousers, and then picked him up like a doll. Ben took a slightly different route today. He took a caged cargo elevator down instead of negotiating the stairs, and Hux could only twitch and shiver in his arms as he listened to the screech of old machinery and the rumble of old motors. 

Two of Ben’s companions were waiting when the elevator gate slid up with a metallic rattle, and then stepped aside to let Ben out. They exchanged soft murmurs — the words somehow skittered off Hux’s brain as he lay warm and comfortable against Ben’s chest, and he could feel panic building in him, but was somehow unable to reach it. As though it was still happening, but from a very great distance. 

One of the other Renfields, a woman, stepped ahead of Ben, and he followed discreetly behind her, just two steps behind. The other, an androgynous figure, their features concealed by the hood of their robe, brought up the rear. There was a profound sense of ritual to this little procession, and Hux found himself being borne towards the double doors of the dining room. 

“No,” Hux managed to whisper, fear rising up in his chest to choke him even through the drugs, “please, Ben.” 

“Shh,” Ben murmured, shushing him gently. “It’s okay. It’s just a little bite, it won’t hurt much.” 

“Please,” Hux said. This time his voice felt strangled, and he realized that he was almost completely numb, that his mind felt fuzzed, his skull oddly heavy. _I have to stay awake,_ he told himself, _I need to remember everything that happens from now on, so I can use it to escape._

The doors swung open to reveal the dining room. Its chandelier was unlit, its furnishings all shrouded in shadow. The woman in front of Ben shook out a folded linen tablecloth that seemed to glow in Hux’s blurry vision and draped it over the dining table with its leather restraints, and Ben laid him gently down on top of it. He flinched as Ben and the woman took hold of his forearms and pinned his wrists above his head, but he wasn’t strong enough to struggle. Well-worn leather creaked softly as they tightened the buckles around him, and then she was stepping away from Hux’s field of vision while Ben reached down to unbutton the collar of his shirt. 

Hux felt the woman’s hands, slender and bony, closing around his ankles as she arranged his feet to her satisfaction, and then the restraints closed on him one after the other. The buckles chimed softly as she tightened them, and then she made a small sound of approval. The chandelier was descending from the ceiling, and for a moment Hux wondered if he was hallucinating. Then he heard the creak and rattle of a chain, and realized that Ben’s other companion had been lowering it to light it. 

Fat beeswax candles had dribbled wax all over the wrought iron frame of the chandelier, and then there was the sharp pop and flare of a match being struck. One after the other the candles caught, lit with golden tongues of flame, and the darkness retreated, grew denser at the peripheries of the dining room, as though sullen from its banishment. The sweet smell of beeswax joined the slightly bitter smell of the spent match, and then the chains rattled again as the chandelier rose towards the rough ceiling, casting a watery halo upon the walls. 

“Ben,” Hux managed to breathe. His voice was failing him, but he could still whisper, resented how thick and sluggish his tongue felt in his mouth. 

“It’s okay,” Ben said. He murmured an instruction to the woman who had helped him restrain Hux, and she nodded and stepped away again. Hux could have turned his head to watch her go, but his muscles felt slack, jellylike, and he could not quite summon the coordination to do so. The woman returned with something in her arms, and she held it out to Ben, who took an end of it. She kept hold of the other, and together they shook it out and draped it over Hux. A blanket, he realized, realized also that his teeth were chattering as though he were very cold, or very frightened. Hux gritted his teeth to try to silence himself, but the strain only triggered tremors in his head and neck. “Just relax,” Ben told him, and Hux shut his eyes against the light as Ben’s gloved hands ran lightly over his brow to tangle in his damp hair. 

The shaking soon passed, but Ben did not stop caressing Hux. His skin prickled hot and cold under the blanket, under the leather of Ben’s gloves, and he wondered dimly if Ben had accidentally overdosed him; he hadn’t felt this bad the two previous times. Hux wasn’t sure. He couldn’t keep hold of his thoughts, it was like trying to close his fingers on smoke. 

There was another set of footsteps coming from Hux’s right, and he saw out of the corner of his eye a gleam, a faint golden haze that his eyes refused to focus on. Ben and his companion knelt, and there was the great hoarse grind of a heavy chair being pulled along the floor. _It’s him,_ Hux thought, as a pale, pale face came into his field of vision. _It’s Snoke._

“Rise,” Snoke said in a midwinter voice of starvation and bitter cold. 

“He has been made ready, Master,” Ben murmured diffidently, as he stood. Hux felt a faint vibration through the table, through its legs and the tabletop he lay on, as Snoke sat down in his chair while Ben’s other companion pushed it carefully in. 

“Excellent.” Snoke no longer looked like he had the last time Hux had seen him. He had looked older, past middle age, but had been hale and whole. He was not as decrepit on this occasion as he had looked the first time Hux had seen him, but his skin had shrunken, clinging to his skull like wetted parchment, and his posture had softened and arched as his accelerated aging had eaten away at his spine. 

Ben stood by Hux’s head and tucked a strong hand under his chin, tipping his head back to better bare his neck, and Hux chose not to look at Snoke, not to see those twisted fingers unbuttoning the placket of his shirt, nor those thin papery lips closing on his neck. The pain, when it came, was almost nothing, less than he might have felt from a paper cut or an insect sting, but he could hear Snoke swallowing, and he shuddered despite the restraints holding him down. “It’s okay,” Ben told him very softly, and then he laid his gloved fingers mercifully over Hux’s eyes. “You don’t have to look.” 

Ben’s touch and voice, the smell of his sweat wedded to the leather of his gloves, those things did not make what was happening bearable. Hux shuddered at the sensation of Snoke’s wet tongue against his throat, flinched weakly when sharp fingernails brushed against his belly, lingering just over the waistband of his trousers as though testing fruit for ripeness.

 _When is he going to stop?_ Hux thought, turned away from that too as he realized the answer would be no comfort. No, it was easier to lose himself in Ben instead, to focus on that beautiful face, on those strong, warm hands. Ben leant in to kiss Hux on the brow, his breath hot on Hux’s clammy skin, and he tried to think only of what kissing Ben had felt like that first time, sweetly drugged spit and salty tears. 

There was an awful sensuality to this feeding, which only increased Hux’s sense of violation. Snake’s lips were now soft and lush against Hux’s skin, his tongue darting lightly out to catch drips of blood. Hux had only fed on another vampire once or twice in his near-century — it was something done only in the heat of passion, with the most intimate lovers. Those associations gave him an uneasy sense of arousal, and Ben’s touches and kisses began to blur into Snoke’s predation as Hux grew weaker from loss of blood. 

This was, despite the lack of penetration, nothing less than rape. _I’m stronger than this,_ Hux tried to tell himself, tried to go through all the platitudes he had been trained to say when interrogating victims and witnesses. Each phrase, each capsule of conventional sympathy only felt like hot tallow on the surface of his mind, burning, cooling, congealing to leave him sullied and greasy. _Please,_ Hux thought silently, _please. I’ll go along with what you want, just finish soon._ He made himself go limp in Ben’s grip, resigned himself to the awful things happening to his body.

Ben let go of Hux’s chin then, registering Hux’s lack of resistance, and threaded those strong fingers into his hair instead. “It’s not so bad, is it?” he murmured, before kissing Hux gently on the lips. Hux shuddered at the contact, remembering how he had said something very similar to Ben after their first kiss. 

“Ben,” Hux whispered against the awareness that he was hard under the blanket, the shame that flared up hot within the depths of his belly at his body’s betrayal — this was something he had not consented to, would never have, and the ache of his traitor erection stirred a sob in his chest. He would not open his eyes, only let the tears run down his temples, cooling rapidly. 

“It’s okay,” Ben murmured again and again, “it’s okay. I survived this. You will.” Hux bucked weakly as someone palmed the underside of his cock through the blanket, through his clothing, and a bubble of nausea rose up his gullet, made him retch weakly at the revulsion he felt for himself. Ben’s hands were both on his head now, which meant — Hux’s eyes flew open in shock, and the light of the chandelier was now too bright, dazzling and leaving afterimages in his blurring vision. 

_How much blood has he taken?_ Hux wondered, and then Snoke pulled away from him and that touch was no longer burning against his skin, his neck and belly. Hux was cold despite the blanket, his hands and feet freezing almost, and his heart was racing. The chair legs scraped against the floor — Snoke standing, Hux supposed, and he saw that terrible face hovering above him. 

Hux’s eyes would not obey him, they did not focus correctly, but Snoke was now young and almost beautiful, his pale eyes flashing silvery in the low light. The planes of his cheekbones were sharp, the hardness of his jaw giving him an aspect of austerity, of famine. _The Picture of Dorian Gray,_ Hux thought as he tried to stop shivering, _but I’m the portrait._

***

Again it was Ben who took care of him, Ben who buttoned his shirt back up, who tugged the blanket up to Hux’s chest before he moved to unfasten the restraints, and Hux did not resist, could not in his present weakness. “Let’s get you back to your room,” Ben murmured solicitous as he slipped a strong hand under Hux’s shoulders, raised him to a half-seated position before picking him up. 

Hux’s head lolled weakly against Ben’s shoulder, the world going gray as consciousness faded. Hux wanted to laugh bitterly. _Swooning like a Victorian heroine,_ he thought, dizzy and perversely giggly, _if only I had fainted in the face of this unspeakable assault upon my person. I wouldn’t have remembered it then._ And then he shook suddenly, spasmodically in Ben’s arms as the tears came at last, coming out on weak hiccuping sobs that wracked his chest with ache. _No._ He knew enough to know that not knowing would only be worse, that he would only torment himself in trying to remember what had happened in that case. 

The cargo elevator was oddly loud to Hux’s ears, managing to drown out the rapid drumbeat of his pulse in his ears, but its screech and hum was a mild comfort. The elevator meant that they were going up, getting closer to Ben’s quarters and the dubious safety of Hux’s bedroom prison. 

_So cold,_ Hux thought, and then the darkness swept in behind his eyelids. He wasn’t wholly unconscious, not yet. He could still register the sensations of movement, of air against his clammy skin, the hollow vibration of Ben’s footsteps on the cold stone floor. 

“We’re almost back,” Ben murmured, and Hux forced his eyes open to look at Ben. It was perhaps a trick of the light, but Ben’s eyes looked almost entirely black, no sclera, no pupil, just a soul-drinking emptiness. 

“My monster,” Hux whispered as Ben’s face blurred to nothing in his vision, “my beautiful monster.”

***

Hux woke up slowly, in bits and pieces, registering separately a delicious warmth at his toes, the softness of a blanket tucked around him. The smell of green tea, hot and fragrant in a small space. This liminal zone between sleep and full consciousness was a pleasant thing, it dulled the jags of fear and shame he kept feeling in between periods of absolute nothingness. It seemed to take forever for his eyes to open, but Ben was there when he did. “There you are,” Ben said, “I was wondering when you’d wake.” 

“How long has it been?” Hux asked in a scratchy hiss, his throat too dry to permit anything louder. There was a hot water bottle at his feet, he realized, freshly refilled, for it was still very warm, and another tucked against his side. 

“A while,” Ben said, evasive. _I’ve lost more time,_ Hux thought, but could not put a finger adequately on why it felt so important for him to track his days. “I was getting worried about you.” Ben helped Hux rise to a half-sitting position, shoving pillows under his shoulders to better support him. The metal frame of his bed bit into the back of his head as he lolled back against it, but the cold was welcome, bracing in a way that made him feel more alert. 

“Here,” Ben said, holding a cup out to Hux. Its contents steamed softly, fragrant with tannin and polyphenols. Ben had thoughtfully put a straw in the cup, and Hux closed his dry lips around it and sipped. The tea was as good as before, and it soothed Hux’s parched throat. 

Hux managed a cup and a half before his belly began to rebel at the sudden heat, and he shook his head weakly and let Ben take the cup away. The warmth of the tea reminded him that he was hungry, desperately so, that he had not been fed while he had been sleeping. And then he remembered why he had been unconscious, and a shudder went through him as he fought a stab of panic cold in his gut, just under the ribcage where the liver was. 

“It’s okay,” Ben said, reaching out to smooth Hux’s hair out of his face, but Hux flinched at the touch, shrank away from Ben reflexively. Something flickered in Ben’s dead gaze then, but he remained still and calm as he put the cup down on the desk and retrieved something else from its top. That something was an IV bag of blood, dark and rich, and Hux’s stomach growled audibly in response. 

Ben popped the pack in silence and held the IV tubing out to Hux as before, and Hux held himself very still, let Ben slip the tube between his lips so he could drink. Hux had to take this unit of blood in small frequent sips, as though it would somehow go straight to his bloodstream if he drank it correctly. It was cold, chilled and slightly stale, but it was sustenance that Hux’s body desperately needed at this point. “Slowly,” Ben said, pinching the tubing off in short intervals to make sure Hux didn’t just guzzle the entire pack at once, “you don’t want to make yourself sick.” 

“Ben,” Hux asked him, once he had taken the empty pack of blood away, “if you’ve survived this, then why do you — “ Words failed him as he rolled his head to the right, to better watch Ben. 

“It’s not easy, I know,” Ben said. He adjusted the fall of the blanket over Hux’s chest without actually touching his skin. “The powerful do what they want, however. No matter what we wish. And if you can’t become powerful like that, then the easiest path is to just let it happen. Just get it over with, make it smooth and efficient. It only gets worse if you fight back.” 

Hux shut his eyes against the bleak acceptance in Ben’s words. _Learned helplessness,_ he thought, thinking back to the classes he took in training. _When someone is trapped and abused for no rhyme or reason eventually it hurts too much to even think of a better future. Escape becomes another torment. So they give up, and resign themselves to it_. Something twisted in his chest not just for his own ordeal, but for the visual of a younger Ben learning to accept abuse because he had no other survivable options. “Is that why you do your master’s bidding?” Hux asked him as cold tears rolled slowly down his cheeks, “Because you know that it’s futile to resist him?” 

“No,” Ben said easily. “I serve him because he saved me. Do you think you can eat something now?” The change of subject was smooth, light, and Hux wondered if Ben had avoided the subject of Snoke because he was concerned about Hux’s physical state, or if he simply didn’t trust Hux enough with that personal information.

Hux opened his eyes and made himself stay still when Ben dabbed at his tears with a clean washcloth. “Yes,” he said afterwards, when he felt capable of controlling his facial expression again. “Something simple. Toast, maybe.” 

“Grilled cheese and soup?” Ben offered. Hux felt a strange blend of hunger and nausea boil up again in the pit of his belly, took a deep breath to dispel the nausea. 

“Not tomato soup,” Hux said after a long, slow exhalation, “it’s always too sweet for me.” 

“Sure,” Ben said, “it’s not going to be anything fancy, just canned stuff, but it’s a start. I’ll see what I’ve got.” With that he picked up the tray that held the cup and teapot, the now-empty IV bag and the washcloth and stepped out of Hux’s room, shut the door and locked it. 

Hux thought of the tally marks under the bed, the ones he was too weak to add to at present. His count was now off, but he thought of the scratches in the wall proving that he was here, that this captivity was real, that he was being held against his will. _And I begin again._

***

It took three nights — at least that was what he thought of them as, the long spans of consciousness divided by sleep — for Hux to be able to get out of bed under his own power. On the fourth day Hux had taken the bedding and curled up under the bed to sleep, pressing his back against the wall marked with his calendar of shame. The pressure calmed him greatly, and the tiny space comforted him. Ben was big enough that it would be hard for him to squeeze in beside Hux, and the bed would protect him from most attempts to touch him in his sleep. Removing the bed to gain access to him would only wake him, let him prepare himself for what came next. The intellectual part of him, the part that worked law enforcement told him that he was becoming irrational from the stress and trauma of his confinement, but he could no longer bear to listen to it. Rationality only made sense in a sane world. It did not apply here, and he was happy to take what comfort he could. 

Hux was still asleep when Ben came in to check on him, and the creak of the bed frame woke him and alerted him to Ben’s presence in the room. “So you’re under there,” Ben said calmly, as though it was routine and normal to live with someone so traumatized that they couldn’t sleep on a bed. “Can I get you an extra blanket or a mattress pad or something? It isn’t comfortable sleeping on linoleum, I should know.”

“I’ll take the blanket, sure,” Hux said. He drew his knees closer to his chest and waited, wondered if Ben would take his bed away in punishment. Instead he saw the bed springs stretch and distort as Ben sat, and then lay down on the bed. 

“Does this help you feel better?” Ben asked him. Hux watched as Ben let his hand hang over the side of the bed, saw those pale fingers enter his narrow slice of the world. “To hide like that, I mean.” 

“Yes,” Hux said. He was highly conscious about the tally marks on the wall, currently hidden behind his back. Ben would not see them as long as he stayed here, but he would have to come out before Ben was forced to drag him out. That would reveal that Hux had been tracking time, and he knew very well that it was easier to disorient a captive if they were insulated from the rhythms and reality of the outside world.

“I used to do that when I was younger,” Ben said conversationally, “when I wasn’t so big. When my parents fought. They did it a lot. It helped then, but it stopped working, you know? Sometimes pain gets so bad you can’t let it out or pretend it isn’t there.” 

The visual of a younger Ben curled up under a bed twisted at Hux’s heart despite the things that Ben had done so far. An awkward young boy with an unruly mop of black hair and great dark eyes, not grown into that aquiline nose yet. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Hux said softly, unsure of where this was going. 

“It isn’t your fault,” Ben said, and Hux could almost see the weak, cold smile spreading across his narrow face. “One day they fought hard enough that someone called the cops on them. You know how that goes. They yelled at each other, mostly, and my dad never laid a hand on me, but social workers got involved anyway. I was ten.” Ben’s fingers twitched in Hux’s vision, and he wriggled away from the wall, reached out with his own right hand and held Ben’s fingers. They were cold to the touch, shockingly so given how warm and steady Ben had always been even in situations that Hux could only describe as horrific. 

“That was a really bad thing,” Ben continued, “because it turns out my dad was an unregistered birth, which meant he had no documentation. My mother didn’t register me either, because she didn’t want to put my dad in danger.” Hux could see where Ben’s story was leading, braced himself for the rest of it. “This social worker — she was a vampire, but I don’t know if it made a difference, humans are pretty shitty people too — ruled that my parents weren’t good for me, so I got taken into state care. That’s where everything went wrong.” Ben’s fingers closed tightly, almost painfully on Hux’s hand, but the tone of his voice was still calm, casual and all the more horrifying for it.

“How did things go wrong?” Hux dared to ask, unwilling to let go of Ben’s hand. Part of him wanted to slide out from under the bed, lie down beside Ben so he could read his facial expressions. Another part of him sensed that Ben was only telling him all this because he felt safe enough to in this moment, and that he needed to be cold-blooded about this and learn as much as he could if he was going to get out of here alive. Hux stayed put, decided to see how far he could drag this conversation, spin it out for more information.

The springs creaked softly over Hux as Ben shifted a little in bed, his fingers slipping out of Hux’s grip. “You worked Loss Prevention, so you know the routine. You’re only there to make sure that people feel safe, which is nice, I guess, but nobody came looking for me when they sold me. Sold me to this guy. He didn’t hurt me too badly, I still have my arms and legs, my eyes. But he showed me how the world really works. Nobody cared about me when I vanished, and nobody was going to come looking for me since I wasn’t in the system. My paperwork somehow went missing, so I didn’t even exist, as far as law enforcement was concerned. I don’t know where my parents are right now. My dad’s probably in a blood farm if he isn’t dead, and my mom? I’ve given up trying to find her.”

“You said Snoke saved you,” Hux said as a sick twist of guilt and shame welled up deep within him. This was exactly the kind of thing Hux worked to prevent, to uncover and scour away whenever he could, but someone had fucked up either through malice or negligence, and Ben had suffered for it. It did not excuse his deeds, but it suddenly made sense to Hux how casual Ben was about abuse, about how Snoke violated Hux’s boundaries as a matter of course. 

“He did. One of the other Knights, you’ve seen them, she showed up on my owner’s arm one evening. I was about fourteen, fifteen then. He hadn’t fucked me yet, he’d been saving me for something special. It turns out his idea of ‘something special’ was snuff. He was gonna make me fuck her, I think, drain me dry when I came, or have me fuck her while he drained her. I know how it makes blood taste better. I was scared, and I didn’t know yet that I don’t like girls. He got pissed off. Held me at knifepoint. She sweet-talked him out of it, made him feed from her first, and out he went, like a light. She took him back to Snoke, but she also took me with her. Master Snoke took me in. He gave me a place to live.” 

“I’m sorry,” Hux said with genuine sadness, “I’m sorry we failed you.” Hux thought of how the nights had become routine for him fifty years ago, realized that it could have been his lapse of attention that had allowed Ben’s plight to go unnoticed all this time. He was culpable, being part of the system, even if it wasn’t specifically his mistake. 

“I’m not.” There was another pinging of bedsprings as Ben rolled out of bed and lay face-down on the cold floor, turning his head to look at Hux. His expression was pleasant as though he had been discussing the weather, or a book he had recently read. “You wanna come out and have some breakfast now?” 

“Yes,” Hux said. He waited for Ben to get up and give him some space, and then crawled out from under the bed, leaving the blankets behind. 

“Let’s get you fed and all that,” Ben said as he extended a hand out to Hux, helped him off the floor. “I’m hungry.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben begins to climb out of his self-imposed prison of abuse and obedience, but will it be too late for Hux?
> 
> \---
> 
> Content warning: Gore  
> Content warning: Abusive violence inflicted on a legal adult by a parental figure  
> Content warnings: Allusions to violent childhood abuse  
> Content warming: Improvised first aid performed by a vampire without medical training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to remind you folks, there is no MCD in this fic, so don't send me rotten produce in the comments, yes?

Hux was curled up for a nap under his bed, the extra blanket tucked around him like a cocoon, when he heard the thump of Ben’s footstep outside his door. This was becoming routine. Ben would sit on the bed, or lie on it, and they would converse. Hux suspected that this was yet another way to undermine his agency, but the tiny freedoms Ben gave him — to dress himself most days, to hide under the bed when he needed to — were in some small part keeping him sane, so he did not refuse. 

_Don’t get used to this,_ he kept telling himself, _this is something you’re doing because you have to survive. He’ll get complacent one day, and you’ll be able to use that._

The door opened, as usual, but Ben’s walk was different. Ben was surprisingly light on his feet for his size, his strides long and confident, neatly paced. This time, however, his feet scraped on the floor as though he were about to stumble, and the bed frame creaked when Ben threw his entire weight on top of it. Hux could see the springs trembling as Ben shifted, and Hux realized that Ben was panting as though exhausted. 

“Is something wrong?” Hux asked, bracing himself just in case. Ben had never been overtly violent, but he had hinted at the possibility of that from time to time. Hux could remember those big hands closing around his neck, his wrist, with a frisson of desire and loathing alike. He wished, not for the first time, that he could shed his skin like a snake. Maybe that way he would finally feel clean. 

“Master Snoke is — “ Ben let out a little gasp as he shifted in bed, “he is displeased at my errors, and has corrected me.” 

“Errors?” Hux asked. Ben seemed to have handled the kidnapping perfectly, all things considered. It was probably how Hux would have done it himself, if he had a mind to. 

“They’re looking for you, you know,” Ben coughed and Hux could see the wince on his face. “Loss Prevention.” 

Hux bit back on his urge to sigh in relief, focused on the pain in his lower lip instead. “You’re in trouble because they’re looking for me.” 

“Yeah. We might have to leave, find a new bolthole.” There was a shivery note in Ben’s speech, and Hux realized to his shock that Ben was crying. 

“I’m coming out now,” Hux said, afraid that Ben would take sudden moves badly. 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Ben said softly, “I don’t want you to see me like this. But then I shouldn’t have come in here to talk to you, right? I should have just gone to my own room.”

“No,” Hux said, something twisting slickly in his gut, a blend of triumph and terror and self-hatred so strong he could almost taste it. “It’s okay.” In this state Ben was going to be more vulnerable, and this weakness was something that Hux could use, even as he felt like a monster to be using it. _It’s Stockholm Syndrome, that’s what it is. Ben’s been kind to me when he didn’t have to be, but he wouldn’t have had to do all this if he’d just left me where I was._ Hux slid out from under the bed and sat slowly up once he was no longer under it, taking the blankets with him. 

“Hi,” Ben said weakly, and Hux flinched at the sight of him. Ben was a mass of bruises and lacerations, his dark hair matted to his face with blood, sweat and tears. Snoke was very displeased indeed. Hux thought of how spindly Snoke looked, even when well-fed, and wondered how he had reduced Ben to such a state, but he did not ask. He didn’t particularly want to know. 

“You’re hurt.” Hux shook out one of the blankets, tucked it over Ben because he didn’t know what else to do. “You’re still bleeding freely.” The worst one Hux could see was a cut running diagonally across Ben’s narrow face, down the side of his neck. It was as though someone had carved him deliberately open with a knife.

“Yeah. I think I left a trail all the way back here,” Ben said. _Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood should run cold,_ Hux thought, remembering a snatch of a story he had read once, of a murderer outwitted by a would-be victim. _But it is so, and it was so. Here’s hand and ring I have to show._

“I can help you with the bleeding, if you’d like,” Hux offered, pushing the thoughts aside at the moment. Who was to say he wasn’t a contemporary Mr. Fox? He looked the part, with his red hair, and he lured the young and beautiful back to his home and took both blood and pleasure from them. 

“You’re gonna need something sharp. Here.” Ben slid a hand beneath his robes and handed Hux a small folding knife, something used more for cutting tape and string on boxes than anything else. Hux felt his heart leap as he closed his fingers around its polished wood handle. _He’s so hurt and miserable, and distracted by both that he’s given me a weapon._ This was something Hux could use, but he had to be careful. Ben might want it back later, and any hesitation would betray his intent to escape no matter what.

“I’m going to need to get this clothing off you first,” Hux said, pulling the blood-spotted blanket aside. “And at least one finger looks broken or dislocated, you’ll need to splint this.” 

“I’ve got stuff for that,” Ben murmured. 

Hux unbelted Ben’s robe, tugged the broad length of leather off and dropped it on the floor with a soft clink. He hesitated before cutting Ben’s tattered robe open, but Ben only nodded and shut his eyes when Hux opened the little knife and took hold of Ben’s left sleeve. The knife was sharp but not sharp enough, and it didn’t have a rounded point, which would have made the process easier, but he sat on the edge of the bed and worked slowly through the sleeves and shoulder seams, ripping them open, before he did the same with Ben’s t-shirt. He left Ben’s boots and jeans on. He would deal with those later. 

Hux did a quick assessment of Ben’s injuries and frowned at the defensive wounds on his forearms, gasped when he drew blood-soaked cloth aside to reveal a small stab wound in the upper left quadrant of Ben’s abdomen, just beneath the ribs. It didn’t look very deep, but blood welled up from it until Hux took off his shirt and wadded it against Ben’s side. “Hold this,” he said, placing Ben’s gloved hand down over it, “I don’t want you to bleed to death here and now.” 

“Don’t worry,” Ben said, his voice barely a whisper, “Master made sure it was a flesh wound. Killing me would negate the point of the lesson.” _A lesson._ Hux flinched then, thinking of his father’s own instructions, reinforced with fist or boot, but Ben did not see it. A flush of shame ran up his neck nevertheless, left his face heated. Ben was bruised where he wasn’t bleeding, his side a nightmare of red-purple. That wasn’t something Hux could help with, unless Ben were willing to let Hux cut him open and bleed into the flesh, and most people objected to that kind of thing without anesthesia and pain relief.

“I’m going to start now,” Hux said softly, once he was sure Ben was holding the cloth against the stab wound in his belly. Hux felt oddly abashed in this raw moment. He had fucked Ben, had let Ben fuck him, but this was something beyond the boundaries of those intimacies, but Ben somehow seemed more naked like this.

“Y-yeah.” Ben whispered, his eyes still shut. Hux held the folding knife up to his face and licked the blade, forced his tongue along the edge until it left a long, deep cut in the tip. He could feel his blood flooding his own mouth, and he swallowed it reflexively before bending his head to Ben’s chest. Hux started licking the cut, which terminated just above Ben’s pectoral muscle. Ben’s blood was slightly different today. Less savory, less bold, freighted with loss and fear and something he couldn’t quite identify.

Ben sucked in a long, slow breath as Hux lapped his way up his neck. Hux bit down on the tip of his tongue to reopen the cut every time it tried to heal, a tiny pain in comparison to the turmoil in his own belly and chest as he tasted fear-sweat and smelled anxiety on Ben’s skin. Hux punctuated his efforts by a gentle kiss on the bridge of Ben’s nose, before he delved further up, smearing his own blood all over Ben’s brow. Ben’s hair was like tangled silk under his hand as he pushed it back from the hairline to finish his work, and the cut was beginning to seal when Hux lifted his head from Ben’s face. 

“That’s a little better, I hope,” Hux said, and Ben nodded, smiled weakly at the lack of pain when he moved his face, his eyes flickering open as Hux bent his head to the cuts on his forearms and wrists. Hux had to use the knife on himself several more times — the cut in his tongue kept healing over, and the process would have been far smoother if he had been left with the use of his own fangs. Nevertheless, he made do, and Ben’s forearms were covered with faint, silvery scars by the time Hux was done. Not a drop of blood was left on his skin. 

That done, Hux took Ben’s hand gently off the shirt wadded over the wound in his belly, peeled the blood-sticky cloth away to reveal the puncture wound. “This is — “ Hux said, trying to find the right words, “I don’t know how much I can do about this, but I can try to stop the bleeding. It’s going to hurt a lot in either case.”

“Do it,” Ben said, his voice thin and papery, “I trust you.” 

“Okay.” Hux shifted on the mattress, straddling Ben’s legs, as he leaned down towards Ben’s hard belly. _So much blood,_ Hux thought, _so much blood to go to waste._ Ben hissed when Hux began lapping away at the wound, trying to determine if it went further than the muscle wall. Anything that deep would be something Hux could do little to nothing about, because Ben would probably die of peritonitis even if Hux sealed the wound, and bleeding out was probably more merciful than that. Hux ran his tongue up the edges of the cut, tasting the clotting blood at its edges, tried not to suck greedily because that would dislodge the forming clots. 

He lifted his head to look at the wound and nodded when he saw it oozing slowly for the moment. The blood on his tongue had helped that process, at least. Now to see if Ben’s injury was mortal. He took a long, slow breath to steady himself, and then jabbed his index finger hard with the knife. The pain was sharp, bright, oddly grounding, and he stared fascinated at his own blood in a way he hadn’t since he had been fourteen. Fifteen? He had lost track of the years. _It’s all the same red,_ he thought. “Brace yourself,” he told Ben, as he slipped his fingertip into the wound. 

Ben keened and whimpered, bit down on a scream as Hux probed the stab wound gently, carefully. Hux let out a small breath of relief when he realized the cut didn’t go all the way through the muscle, that Ben’s abdominal wall was still intact. “You’ll live,” Hux told Ben, let out a small burp of nervous laughter as he began to fill the wound with his own blood, cutting his own wrist when the bleeding from his fingertip wasn’t copious enough. 

Hux was shaking from blood loss, could hear his pulse ringing in his ears when he was done, but Ben was now more relaxed, the tension seeping out of his body as the wounds began to heal and the pain faded. “There you go,” Hux said to Ben, before he started to climb awkwardly off the bed. He wobbled when he did so, fell, and hit the floor with a dull thump. Pain flared dully along his side, his arm and shoulder, and it helped disperse the hazy feeling in his head. 

“You okay?” Ben asked from his spot on the bed. He stirred briefly as though to look, but then sank back down as his ribs protested.

“Yes,” Hux said, brushing Ben’s concern off, “just a head rush. I just spent a lot of time with my head lower then my hips. Where’s your first aid stuff?” 

“Small black bag in my bedroom locker, under the shelf, where people normally stick their shoes.” Ben tried to rise, but winced as he sat up, let himself fall back onto the bed.

“Okay,” Hux told him, “just stay here.” He left his bedroom, shut the door behind him and went instead to Ben’s room.

Hux wasn’t sure what he would find in there, and it was almost anti-climactic to find a small, cluttered space with another bed in it, just like the one he slept under. It wasn’t filthy, far from it, but the sheets hadn’t been changed in a while and they left the very air perfumed with the smell of Ben’s sweat and skin, tinged ever so faintly with spunk. _Well, it’s not like he’s not allowed to have a sex life,_ Hux thought, half-amused. The clutter was mostly books, clean clothes in a large cardboard box. Things that had no place to go because there wasn’t much shelving in the room itself, nor a dresser or a nightstand. Just the bed, a locker and a footlocker at the foot of the bed. An ancient wind-up alarm clock sat on the floor beside the bed, and Hux could imagine Ben reaching down with one long arm to turn it off after it woke him.

It was only after Hux had stepped into the middle of the room, his head swimming slightly, that he realized that Ben had permitted him freedom of the entire suite. It would be effortless to find a weapon better than that little knife, dispose of Ben, and then find his way out of here. _But then what?_ Hux didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know what was outside this place, and he wasn’t sure if Ben’s companions would have been as kind if they tracked him down and caught him again. _No. If I’m to leave here then I’m going to need his help._ Hux thought, and then shuddered as he recognized the pattern of his thoughts. He was falling into learned helplessness, breaking under the stress of his situation, and becoming a facsimile of Ben himself. 

_But he trusts me. He let me close to him with a knife, already. I could have slit his throat and taken as much blood as I needed to recover, then leave. And now he’s in the same situation I’m in._ Hux sighed heavily, went up to the old locker and opened its door, hauled out the black nylon bag from the niche in the bottom. 

“You’re back,” Ben said, pale and listless, as Hux returned with the medical bag. 

Hux was fairly sure that he hadn’t drunk very much of Ben’s blood in his earlier ministrations, and then he thought of the trail of blood spots that would have marked his passage through the halls, and nodded to himself. “I am,” he said.

“You could have run,” Ben laughed weakly.

“And what,” Hux said with false archness, “find myself without shoes, without food or blood in a place I don’t know? It could be daylight outside for all I know, and my head would hurt so much it’d be effortless for one of your friends to find me again.” 

Ben did not answer. He only blinked tears out of his eyes as Hux put the bag down on the small desk in the room, unzipped it and went through its contents. A small can of analgesic spray, bandages of various kinds, even hemostats and a suturing kit, and a set of sterile-packed plastic-handled scalpels. Hux rooted around until he found a roll of gauze and medical tape.

“I’m going to take care of the bruises first,” Hux said as he brought the supplies to the bed, left them in the shadow of Ben’s left thigh. He uncapped the analgesic spray, turned the nozzle according to the directions on the packaging, and then went over most of Ben’s torso and arms. He then carefully helped Ben peel his gloves off, moving with care. Ben definitely had a fractured or dislocated finger on his left hand, from the way his ring finger was bent. “I’m going to try to reduce that,” Hux said as he took hold of Ben’s hand in both of these.

“This is probably a shitty time to ask,” Ben murmured, “but you have medical training, right?” He was starting to shake as his muscles relaxed further, now he no longer hurt so much that he had to hold his entire body tense and rigid against the hurt.

“No,” Hux laughed, “but I’ve learned a lot in a hundred years. Or nearly that.” 

“Mm,” Ben grunted, and then closed his eyes again as though unwilling to watch the process. It was something Hux had seen before — some people could deal easily with the sight of their own blood, but blanched at the crepitus that resulted from broken bones.

“All right. This is going to hurt. On the count of three.” Hux took hold of Ben’s damaged finger. “One,” he counted, “two.” He didn’t wait for three, only swiftly tugged Ben’s finger straight until he heard the pop of the joint settling into its usual position. Ben was too surprised to do more than just let out a roar of pain.

“You were supposed to count to three,” Ben protested as Hux padded both his middle and ring fingers with gauze.

“You would have tensed up then, and reducing the dislocation would have been harder, and would have hurt far more.” Hux tore off pieces of medical tape and wound them carefully, loosely around Ben’s fingers, using the middle finger as a splint for his ring finger. He pressed gently on Ben’s fingernail, checked his capillary refill to make sure he hadn’t put the tape on too tightly. 

Ben did not reply, and Hux looked up to see his reaction, found that Ben’s eyes were welling with tears. “I don’t think anyone’s ever cared whether it hurt before. Before I lost my mom, anyway.” 

“Pain is a profoundly poor teacher despite the claims otherwise. What’s the use of learning something if you’re so traumatized you’re suffering whenever you use those skills? It’s never about your own good.” Hux said easily, conversationally as he helped Ben out of his boots, tugged his jeans gently off to reveal his hips and legs. “It’s entirely about them getting to exert their power upon you.”

“It’s my fault, you know,” Ben said out of nowhere as tears began to roll down his face to soak in the blood-spotted pillow beneath his head. “I should have just asked to leave when I found out you worked Loss Prevention, that’s what we normally do when the mark’s someone who would be missed.” 

“Then why didn’t you?” Ben’s knees were scraped despite the tough denim, and his shins were bruised badly. His feet were fine, though. Hux swabbed Ben’s scrapes with an iodine solution, and then taped more gauze over them to keep the wounds from drying out. They would heal faster and better that way. 

“Because you were a Hux, and Master Snoke likes the older bloodlines. He says the blood is purer. Tastes better,” Ben said, oddly childlike. “And you were so beautiful, and I — I wanted you. I thought that if I was going to let someone fuck me, that it would be nice if they were pretty, and you were. And you were also really kind to me.” 

Ben had not allowed Hux a mirror, had not let him look into the small shaving mirror in his bathroom, and for a moment Hux’s heart lurched in his chest. _What do I look like now? Why is he talking about my appearance in the past tense?_ “Most vampires aren’t good people. It’s a side effect of having to feed off sapient prey,” Hux said to cover his fear. He picked up the can of analgesic spray and covered Ben’s shins in the stuff. Those bruises would leave him very stiff for the next few days as damaged muscle swelled due to inflammation.

“I did some research, you know,” Ben said, still blinking tears away. “Talked to the other hustlers to get a read on who to choose, who to avoid. And you say you’re not a good man, but a couple of the others told me that you let them back out when they changed their minds, let them keep the money. You buy them supper if they haven’t eaten. Also, you’re a good source of free drugs.”

Hux laughed bitterly at that last tidbit of gossip. “I just enjoy it more if — if they’re also enjoying it. Feeding, or fucking. Both, I suppose.”

“Yeah. I should know from experience,” Ben said as he took hold of Hux’s wrist, as he stood to put the bandages and tape back in the little medical bag. Ben tugged gently, and Hux put the things away and then sat gently down on the the bed as Ben squirmed aside to give him room. 

“And you do,” Hux said as he lay down, inhaling the smell of iodine and Ben’s blood on the sheets, let the scents comfort him a little. 

“I do,” Ben said. He tugged the blanket over Hux, over himself, and the both of them lay wedged close together like lovers buried in the same coffin.

***

Ben did not ask for the knife back, afterwards, and Hux kept it tucked in his trouser pocket until after he had helped Ben to the bathroom for a hot shower. And then he slipped back into his bedroom, slipped the knife between mattress and bed frame on the left side, and taped it in place with medical tape. It wasn’t ideal, but it would work for now. 

And then, tired and blood-smeared and hollow beyond hunger, Hux took up the bloodstained blankets from the top of the bed, and crawled back under it for a few minutes of rest. 

***

Hux lay dazed and dizzy in his bed, too weak to move. He had put twelve more tally-marks on the wall since Ben had stumbled in hurt, and that amounted to thirty-three in total. Thirty-three days, he estimated, not counting the days he might have lost to unconsciousness. And there were a lot of them at this point. Something had changed in the way Ben now saw Snoke, and Hux suffered for it. The feeding sessions had become more frequent, more harrowing, leaving Hux with little time to recover. Conscientious as Ben was, he still wasn’t feeding Hux enough blood for him to recover fully.

“He’s taking too much, Ben,” Hux whispered as Ben tucked the blankets over him and tucked a hot water bottle at his frigid feet. 

“I know,” Ben said. His expressive mouth twisted bitterly, and his eyes were very bright with tears, but he only continued adjusting the covers, as though an inch of coverage could make a difference in the face of Hux’s illness and misery.

“I don’t want to die,” Hux sighed, too weary to muster more of a protest. 

“I know,” Ben said again. He took an IV bag of blood and popped it, fed the end of the tubing into Hux’s mouth with exquisite care. “Drink first, talk later.” 

The blood was as always slightly stale, near the end of its storage life, but Ben had warmed it in a basin of water, and it tasted a little better this time. It took longer for Hux to drink it this time, as it had the previous times, after the feedings. It was always as though he were too breathless to swallow. 

“I don’t want you to die, either,” Ben said. He ran a gloved hand along Hux’s brow as he said that, pushed strands of hair out of his eyelashes. “You’ve been kind to me, when you have no reason to be.” 

“Because —“ and Hux paused there, tried to catch his breath, “because you tried to be kind to me. Even with what you did in the first place.” He let his eyes close, waited a few moments until Ben squeezed gently on the blood bag, made more trickle into Hux’s mouth. He was too tired to sip from the tubing like a straw, at this point. 

“Master is really angry with me,” Ben said quietly as he continued to trickle-feed Hux more blood. “And I accept that I fucked up when I brought you back. But he didn’t ask me to turn you loose when I presented you, before — before the dinner. So I don’t understand why he blames only me. And it’s not your fault people are looking for you. It’s just because of who you are and where you work.” Hux could not see Ben’s facial expression with his eyes shut, but there was anguish in his voice, and genuine hurt. “I think it’s because he knows I like you. I’ve asked him to let me give you more blood, so you’ll last longer, since he likes the way you taste so much. But he won’t.” 

Perhaps this was the time, Hux thought, that all these days of carefully cultivating affection in Ben’s soul had paid off. “I’m going to go to sleep soon, Ben,” he said, his breath catching in his throat as he whispered, “I’m going to go to sleep and not be able to wake up.” He was too exhausted to lie, but the truth was a powerful weapon nevertheless. 

“Like hibernation, right?” Ben asked, anguish written plain across his face. His mouth quivered as though he were about to cry, and he was catching his breaths in short sharp gasps against the tears he did not want to shed.

“The oldest, the purest of blood, they could sleep if there wasn’t anyone else to eat around them. Wake up when they sensed humans again.” Hux coughed, sighed, and Ben took the IV tubing away so he wouldn’t choke on the blood. “But they were monsters, and they bred with humans out of animal lust.” 

“They made halfblood offspring. Master Snoke told me. I know they didn’t look human, either.” And they had not. Pureblood vampires were atavistic creatures, slash-tongued with a mouthful of sharp teeth, bat-like patagia stretching under their forelimbs, and their offspring had retained the bestial stamp upon their physiology.

“When humans grew numerous, lived in cities and knelt to kings,” Hux said, remembering his tutor’s avuncular manner, “the halfblooded were too easy to pick out. Too easy to find and kill with swords and spears and fire. So they bred with humans, and spawned us.” Ben sat still, listening to Hux as though rapt. Hux wondered very briefly how much Ben actually knew about vampires and their history, given that he had spent more than half his life being owned by one abusive bastard, and then another. It was better, easier to manipulate the ignorant.

“Yeah, and I know how that goes. You lived among us, and sometimes the legends were really about you. And then the First World War happened, and then the Last War. We nearly went extinct, and you came out of hiding to work with us, and guide us.” Ben spoke those facts very simply, as though he had learned them from a third grade textbook. And who was to say he hadn’t?

Ben took his hand, and Hux luxuriated in the heat of his touch, in the soft worn glove leather against his own skin. “Once I go into torpor,” he said, “I won’t be able to wake up. I’ve too much human ancestry.”

There was a soft click as Ben ground his teeth, and Hux could see it in his mind’s eye, the stubborn set of his jaw, the thin line of his determined mouth. “I could feed you while you slept,” Ben said.

Hux managed a weak chuckle. “I wouldn’t be able to digest it.” His body would shut down, organ by organ as his vampiric metabolism cannibalized his flesh to maintain the last tremors of his life. First his consciousness, and then his digestive system and kidneys would go. Eventually, liver, heart and lungs would fail. 

Hux had seen vampires who had, when faced with their nature at puberty, chosen to starve themselves to death rather than feed on the humans they had grown up with. The corpses were light, parchment skin stretched over fragile bone, and great care had to be taken in moving them as they crumbled easily into greasy flakes, like bone-ash. “You’re starting to do it now, aren’t you?” Ben asked him. "You can’t finish your meals, can’t finish the blood I give you. You’re so tired and drowsy and so cold to the touch all the time.” 

“Yes,” Hux said, wondering how exactly the conversation had taken this turn. He had wanted to see if guilt worked on Ben, but was also too tired and confused to follow his thoughts all the way to the end. It was too late to escape now, he knew, and had known for days. Now he only hoped to die easily and painlessly. “It’s not a bad way to go.” 

“Hux,” Ben said, his voice so very sad, and so deadly serious. He left his warm hand on Hux’s brow, and Hux opened his eyes just a slit, to look at Ben’s face. “I know you kept my knife. You could have used it on me, and then run. Why didn’t you?” Ben’s narrow face was a pale blur before Hux, lunar against the midnight of his dark, wavy hair. 

Hux took a few breaths, trying to muster the strength to speak. “‘Cos,” he said at last, shedding the posh accent, listening to his own voice falter in his head, “‘cos I couldn’t leave you here like this.” It was truth, he realized. At some point he had simply given up on manipulating Ben, had given up on escape. He had focused, like a doomed and dying man, on the last tiny pleasures he could reach for in the form of Ben’s company, and Ben’s body. 

There was a weight and a pressure on his chest, and hot breath through the blanket. Ben had laid his head down on Hux’s breast, and hot tears soaked into the fabric to warm Hux’s skin. He reached slowly up and ran his fingers over Ben’s silky hair, knowing that the gesture would be one of the last things he ever did. 

“It’s okay,” Hux managed to murmur to Ben, “it’s okay.” He closed his eyes then, and let himself sink down into his pillow, and let go. It was like sinking back-first into a pond, or a lake, cold spreading up his skin to cover him entirely as the world faded away from him.

***

Hux felt cold. The rain, he supposed, as he watched his younger self press his face to the windowpane. Small and thin for his age, and pale as a slip of paper. From this perspective he can see the scrapes on his knuckles, the skinned knees and the bruises on his face. He’s always been a fighter despite his unimpressive build — how else to survive when other children, boys mostly, singled him out as a target because he was delicate, otherworldly-looking and also a fatherless bastard? 

Someone had dressed those scrapes and put ointment on the knuckles. Someone had held him and told him that he was a little fighter, smoothed his fox-colored hair down and told him that it was okay to be who he was. _Mum,_ he thinks. He knows any moment now she’s going to call to him from the kitchen, where she’s been making breakfast. It’s not anything impressive, not when his father didn’t bother tracking him down until he was fourteen. A bowl of goody, some leftover cabbage mashed into potatoes to make colcannon, and a pair of fish fingers, which had come frozen from a box. It was still better than what she ate, sometimes, especially when she didn’t get enough hours at the restaurant. She’d bring home leftovers for supper. That and breakfast would be the only warm meals he had in the day. 

He can see her right now, her hair as gloriously red as his. She’s just a slip of a woman, girlish, certainly looking much too young to have a nine-year-old son. She is only twenty-six. She has never spoken about his father. And he has never dared to ask, not with the rage and hurt that boiled up behind her hazel eyes when he did the first time. She comes out from the galley kitchen to the living room that’s also his bedroom, and she smiles as though everything is right with the world, because he’s there. She tells him stories of Setanta, about how he grew up to be strong and beautiful, to become Cu Chulainn, and other tales of the salmon of wisdom and the Giant’s Causeway.

“Come and eat your breakfast,” she says, and Hux’s younger self turns towards her, catches sight of Hux watching as he does. Their eyes meet and lock, and Hux understands that he does not belong there, that he has never belonged there, as much as he loved her. He had once been this boy, until his changing blood turned him into something other. A changeling, a blood-thirsty redcap. And now he’s still here, nearly a century after his birth, and she has long been dust and ashes. 

_Mum,_ he thinks, and all goes gray. 

***

There was a roar of thunder, one Hux knew intimately well, and it set his ears to ringing. A gunshot. He would have flinched in pain, moved cover his ears, but he hadn’t the strength to stir. Two more shots rang out, but they were something he felt more than heard, and then strong, warm hands were working desperately at the restraints around his wrists and ankles. There was tugging, and then a rasping sound as cold metal slid between his skin and the worn leather cuffs, and in this manner was he freed limb by limb. There was a blanket redolent of Ben’s scent, of the intimate fragrance of his skin and hair, his sweat and spunk, and Hux registered it dimly, mostly by its smell when someone moved him from the table on which he lay. Footsteps, loud and hurried on the ends of long legs and booted feet, and the metallic screech and hum of the cargo elevator. 

Hux forced his eyes open to find himself in Ben’s arms, carried like a doll, a toy, as though he weighed scarcely anything at all. “I’m going to get you out of here, Hux,” Ben said. His face was mottled in a way Hux did not recognize, and then a light flickered in the elevator cage. Those spots were blood, Hux realized dimly. Whose? It doesn’t matter. Nothing mattered, and he was beyond caring, didn’t even remember why he would want to. 

There was another smell he recognized in Ben’s hair, on his clothing. Spent gunpowder. “I didn’t know you knew how to shoot,” Hux mumbled. 

“Yeah, neither did I, until just now,” Ben said, panting with what sounded like anxiety, anxiety and exertion. “I’m going to get you out of here. Just — just stay awake for me, can you do that?” Ben sounded like he was about to cry. _Why?_ Hux didn’t understand. He was wrapped in a warm blanket, tucked safely in Ben’s arms, and it was comfort enough to know that. Consciousness left him slowly and easily, like a bath draining, or a glass of wine poured into a sink, diminishing bit by bit until none remained.

***

Hux was fourteen when the fever took him. His mother plied him with soup and lemonade for his thirst, but nothing helped. The light hurt his eyes, and he pulled the covers over his head. At night, when she wasn’t looking, he bit down on his own thumb until it bled, and then suckled at it like an infant, comforted, if not satisfied by the taste of his own blood. This went on for three days, chills and aches alternating. His jaw hurts, and he was too embarrassed to admit it to his mother then, but his dick hurt too — it was throbbing and not in the pleasant way he was learning to appreciate, at this age. Eighty years and change down the line, and Hux knew that the pain had been his fangs and baculum growing in, had been the predator in his ancestry awakening at last and reconfiguring his body from the metabolism up. 

Hux can see her now, behind his eyelids, her face so pale in the darkened bedroom as she tries to feel his forehead, but he squirms away from her touch, because he wants to bite her and doesn’t know why. 

“I think I’m rabid, mum,” Hux had said. He tugged his knees up to his chest and gritted his teeth against another wave of chills, hot and cold through the thin cotton of his pajamas. 

“That’s nonsense,” she told him, calm and steady, “you only catch that from a dog bite, and there haven’t been any rabies cases — “ And then her face went pale, as white as the spotless fabric of her chef’s jacket at the start of a shift. She stood and stepped back from Hux’s bed, and put her hand over her mouth. “You’re like him,” she whispered, her voice just loud enough to carry, and Hux smelled the fear coming off her skin, realized that he could almost taste the blood behind her skin. “You’re like your father.” 

Father. The father she never told him about, would never mention, would never even allow him to ask about. 

_What is my father?_ Hux wondered in his sickbed, closed his irritated, overheated eyes in anxiety and hurt. _What kind of a monster is he? What kind of monster am I?_

Hux’s mother stepped out of his bedroom and slammed the door, and he heard her sobs diminishing as she walked away from him, heard her call someone on the phone, but he could not make out the words of the conversation, not until the end of the call. 

“I don’t want to see him again,” her voice had come stretched and attenuated through the thin walls, “I don’t want to talk to him. Just tell him — tell him he needs to collect his vampire son.” That was the last time Hux ever heard her voice. 

***

“Hux,” Ben said. His voice sounded strange, it echoed as though he were shouting down a chimney or an oubliette. “Hux, stay awake.” Hux could not open his eyes, did not have the strength to respond. He could feel himself moving, but he had no idea how or why. Instead he drifted slowly as the world turned around him, giddy, confused, and so very tired. 

“Hux,” Ben said again, “can you hear me?” Hux felt himself being laid down on an uneven floor, rough and furry-feeling through the cloth wrapped around him. There was a smell of crushed grass, a cool, fresh wind whistling softly in his ears, and all those sensations were welcome after weeks (months?) of confinement underground. 

_Ben,_ Hux wanted to say, but his tongue felt cold and thick and awkward in his mouth. He wanted to cough, but couldn’t summon the breath with which to do so. Warm hands caressed his forehead, smoothed his hair away from his icy brow. 

“Hux. Hang in there. I’m going to feed you now.” Hux did not want to do any of that. He wanted to let himself sink into the grass he was lying on. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Surely he would wake up from this nightmare if only he caught some rest. Hux felt in this moment that now that he had been laid upon the green grass, that the earth would simply open and welcome him into its embrace, break him down into his constituent elements and minerals. He longed for it, longed to return to the soil, and did not know why.

Someone was holding his mouth open, and something warm and wet trickled past his lips to pool in the back of his throat. Hux tried to swallow, couldn’t, and choked instead. “Hold on,” Ben said, and Hux felt himself being moved again, found his head tilting back as Ben tried to support him. “Take a sip, Hux,” Ben told him, “come on.” He felt Ben’s skin against his lips, felt sticky warmth spill onto his tongue.

Hux swallowed a shallow mouthful, swallowed again against the flavor of iron and salt. “There we go,” he heard Ben say, “just a little more.” Hux opened his eyes, but they did not focus properly. He only made out Ben’s eyes, cold and dark and somehow worried. _Why?_ Hux wondered, but he hadn’t the wit to puzzle it out. “C’mon,” Ben said again, “just a little more, can you do that for me?” Hux’s throat refused to work, and Ben’s thick blood dripped out of his mouth, ran wasted into the grass to nourish the slumbering seeds below.

Hux closed his eyes and turned his face away from Ben’s bleeding wrist, pressed himself into the comforting solidity of Ben’s shoulder. The darkness was warm and reassuring this time, fuzzy and utterly at peace as he took another tiny breath against Ben’s chest, savoring the salt and musk of his scent. Such an easy way to die, so easy to let go. 

_Perhaps the rain will have stopped when you’re done,_ a voice echoed from the back of his head, a voice he no longer recognized. 

“No,” Ben whispered, shook him hard, but Hux could barely feel the movement at this point. “Stay awake, please,” Ben begged him, “stay with me, Hux.” Why was Ben crying? Had something bad happened? Hux did not know, and he no longer had the strength to ask.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux lies comatose and close to death, but time continues to unspool as he does. What happens while he is asleep, and what does he wake to?
> 
> \---
> 
> Content warning: Someone in this one is a lying son of a bitch.  
> Content warning: Good cop/Bad cop style interrogations  
> Content warning: medical reports on critically ill patient's condition

_Excerpt from supplemental investigation report concerning Agent Hux’s abduction._

ARRIVAL AT SCENE: On the above time and date the r/o was dispatched to Six Oaks Rd. at the Mini Market 24-hour Convenience Store in ref. to 911 call requesting assistance. Upon r/o’s arrival r/o noted a young human male, estimated 20 to 25 years of age, in a seated position against a back alley wall, with an unconscious person in his arms. He immediately identified himself as the caller, and gave the name B. when requested by r/o. B’s companion, named here as John Doe, was found on further examination to be a vampire, male, alive but unresponsive. 

R/o then noticed a handgun tucked into B’s waistband and requested he stand with his hands up. B. complied and dropped the firearm when asked to, and did not resist arrest. R/o noted multiple injuries to B’s inner arms, and when asked about them explained that he had been trying to feed John Doe. A search of B’s person revealed a small folding penknife, its blade bloodstained. Both the firearm and penknife were tagged as evidence and later placed in the evidence room at the precinct HQ. 

R/o checked John Doe’s pulse, found multiple wounds to his neck and ligature marks on wrists and ankles, and helped maintain John Doe’s airway until Medic 1 arrived at the scene. 

***

Phasma was exhausted, and she had been for the last six weeks. Hux had gone missing and remained so up until he had turned up in an ER on the very verge of death, and Loss Prevention was now moving to take over the police investigation — which endeared them to no-one, exactly. She stood outside the interrogation room, on the other side of its two-way mirror, and drank her terrible coffee while she watched Agents Thanisson and Mitaka interview “Ben”. 

Ben was a tall, broad-shouldered young man, his face haunted with guilt and pain, and Loss Prevention had only his word to go by that his name was indeed Ben. There were no records of his existence anywhere whatsoever. It wasn’t as though unregistered humans were merely urban legends, even though their numbers were truly far less than popular estimates indicated. Almost every human Phasma had known — and she had known many over her long existence — had considered the blood tax a fair exchange for the rights and privileges they enjoyed under vampiric leadership.

Oh, there had been some resisters very early on, in the late 1950s, when Phasma had been a young-ish vampire herself, just past her forties, and she remembered being on the hunter-killer squads that had gone out after the so-called “free” humans had unleashed a resistance campaign of arson and bombing. Some of them had refused to live with vampires due to religion, others had refused to submit due to ideology, but they died like any other human did. And the first blood farms had been built to contain the survivors, a formidable stick reminding others that it was always better to accept the carrot. 

But unregistered humans were truly very rare nowadays, partially because resistance was so futile, and also because an unregistered human was technically not a person under law. The most you could charge someone with for murdering an unregistered human was littering, or perhaps public obscenity if the method were particularly unpleasant. Ben didn’t deserve the courtesy of an interview, not really, but the situation was complex enough that Director Krennic demanded that the investigation task force do everything by the book. 

“You’re not going to talk to or interact with our suspect, Phasma,” Krennic had told her, not unkindly, as she paced the floor of his office, too tense and weary to sit. “I know your history with Hux. I know you’re good friends and that you were more than friends for some time. I’m not going to censure you for that, because neither of you gave me any trouble during. But I want to make sure we get all the information from this ‘Ben’ that we can get, and I’m afraid you’re going to kill him the moment you walk into the interrogation room.”

Krennic had not been entirely wrong. Phasma had always had a bloodthirsty streak, which was why she decided to stay and work Loss Prevention despite other opportunities that had come up. It seemed a good way to keep in mind just how fragile humans were, and it helped her mind her temper around them. Ben was a very lucky man that Phasma was incredibly disciplined, vicious as she could be when pressed.

 _You were always the soft touch._ That was something she had told Hux more than once over their long friendship. She had always played the good cop, with her looks and superficial warmth, and Hux had used his hauteur and coldness to good advantage, but he had always been the more soft-hearted one. _Look where that got you, Armie._ Phasma’s fangs itched, and she looked at Ben’s white throat, imagined what it would be like if she tore it out without even bothering to drink. 

That would still have been kinder than whatever had happened to Hux. 

***

 _Excerpt from an internal medical case report on Agent Hux’s condition on his arrival at hospital._

An unidentified male vampire was brought to the Emergency Room, history unknown. Patient was examined and managed according to ATLS protocol. Pulse rate 140, BP 65/43, SPO2 72%, GCS 3. Abdomen normal, FAST negative, as was polytrauma CT scan. Patient’s pupils were dilated, unresponsive to light. Lack of capillary refill and papery skin texture indicated that patient was in the middle to late stages of torpor. 

Supportive care was initiated immediately with fluid resuscitation, and patient was maintained in the ICU. Blood work indicated increased serum creatinine. Negligible urine output following fluid resuscitation indicated acute renal failure, and patient was placed on hemodialysis. Increased prothrombin time and lack of bowel sounds indicates hepatic and GI involvement in multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. Patient’s condition has since worsened, necessitating mechanical ventilation and parenteral nutrition. Prognosis is poor.

***

_Transcript of suspect interview conducted by Agents Mitaka and Thanisson_

MITAKA: We found your fingerprints all over Agent Hux’s sidearm. Can you explain why?

SUSPECT B: I took it because I had to make sure it didn’t look like he had been kidnapped.

THANISSON: Forensics indicates the pistol had been fired. Your fingerprints were under the gunpowder residue, and three rounds were missing from the magazine. 

SUSPECT B: Yeah. I used it to get out of the shelter, when Ma- when Snoke wanted to kill Hux. 

MITAKA: According to what you’ve told me so far, you’ve served Snoke for more than a decade. Why did you intervene?

SUSPECT B: I used to think Snoke was kind to me, you know? He was so much nicer than — than my previous master. He let me stay. But I guess I didn’t know what real kindness was until I met Hux. I was the reason he was suffering, but he never hurt me, not once. I couldn’t let him die. 

MITAKA: I see. 

THANISSON: Convenient timing, that. 

SUSPECT B: Like, the others I brought back for Snoke. They all hated me. They cursed me, spat at me. That’s fine. I know I’m a monster. I have no right to be treated kindly, but he did anyway and — I think I loved him. I think I still do. Snoke realized it, and that’s why he wanted to kill Hux so quickly. 

THANISSON: As a punishment?

SUSPECT B: Yeah, he wanted me to watch. That’s how I was there to shoot him.

MITAKA: Three times, twice in the face, with Agent Hux’s sidearm.

SUSPECT B: Yeah. Snoke was a bit preoccupied when I did it. I’d never shot someone before. It was louder than I thought. Also messier. I told you this before, though.

MITAKA: I just want to make sure we have the correct information.

***

Hux lay silent and still in his bed, the only sounds in his hospital room the hiss of a ventilator and the soft beeps of monitors. The nurses kept the light low in his room, but it wasn’t something Phasma minded. She could see in the dark. She sat down on a chair by his bed, biting her lower lip as she tried to control her breathing, fought the rage she could feel pounding in her ears. 

Hux was fragile and broken in his sickbed. His sleek build had been worn down to emaciation as his body had cannibalized fat and muscle, and then internal organs, to stay alive. He had lost so much hair that his scalp showed pale under the red and his parchment skin had buckled and corrugated, lining his face with care. Old wounds had reopened bloodlessly in his flesh, and more than a dozen bite marks festooned his neck, some old and scarred, others half-healed, like the ligature marks in his wrists and ankles. In the low light he looked like an oil painting that had cracked and blemished after years of improper storage. 

Phasma wanted very much to take Hux’s hand, but he was fragile enough that her touch could damage his flaking skin, and he was beyond any comfort she could give, in any case. She had accessed the medical reports in his case file, and they had been quite bleak. His body had shut down to the point where his liver and kidney function had gone, and he was no longer able to digest the blood that would revive him from this state. 

The supportive care being administered was something of a Hail Mary pass — most vampires in his condition died. The renal and hepatic dialysis, the fluids and parenteral nutrition, those were all intended to take the burden off his failing organs in hopes that it would free up one last burst of strength, divert energy invested in keeping himself alive towards healing instead. 

“Ben” had been found with cuts all over his wrists, all made in a desperate attempt to feed Hux as he had weakened slowly but inevitably. This was proof that the young man had at some point started sympathizing with Hux more so than with the other members of his cult — at least that was the only way Phasma knew to describe what Ben had described in his interview with Mitaka and Thanisson. It wasn’t unheard of.

Traumatic bonds worked both ways. Stockholm Syndrome could leave a hostage emotionally dependent on an abductor, but there were cases where hostage-takers had become so emotionally enmeshed with their victims that they had eventually acted against their own best interests. Mitaka had been skeptical of Ben’s story, but then he was fairly young as vampires went. Phasma had been born before the First War, and had grown up to see it referred to the Great War, and then the First World War. She had seen the last surviving halfblooded vampire in the flesh, one so old that it had gone feral and been forced to prey on other vampires to survive, had in fact been part of the hunter-killer squad that had gone into the Balkans, staked the creature through the heart and burned it to ash in 1954, shortly before the end of the Last War. 

It had killed several members of her team, all older, skilled vampires, before she had managed to take it down with a lucky shot to the head, and it had been trying to heal its wounds even after she had pinned it to the ground with a sharpened lance and doused it in kerosene. Search teams were still securing the warren of tunnels and bomb shelters that had served as Snoke’s current lair, and the things they were turning up were consistent with Ben’s account. 

Forensics had found a quantity of dried blood and brains, tooth and bone fragments in the massive dining room, but no body. Some vampires were strong and powerful enough to shrug off mortal injuries. Snoke, flush with Hux’s blood, could have easily survived the two shots Ben had fired in his face, point-blank, which meant that he was still out there. There had been no sign of his retainers except the belongings they had left behind, which Phasma took as a sign that they had collected their wounded master and spirited him away to a backup bolthole or lair. 

This investigation was serious enough at this point that Krennic expected the hunter-killer squads to show up and claim jurisdiction any moment now. “We’re not equipped or funded enough to handle a full-on hunt,” he had told Phasma over a warmed mug of blood, “not especially now, when all the evidence backs up the kid’s story about there being an old one running a cult. I expect they’ll deputize a few of us to help with the effort, though, so if you want to vent your anger that’s a good place to start.”

She had sent polite feelers out to the closest office run out of D.C, and asked off-the-record if a place could be made for her on such a hypothetical task force. Her experience hunting down feral vampires and resisters alike would make her a valuable asset if so. There had been no reply so far, but she didn’t expect one until next evening or so. The grapevine remained silent on whether HK was going to take over the investigation, which meant almost certainly that it would. The lack of gossip spoke more than anything else. 

“Hux,” Phasma said at last, leaning close over him in desperation, “wake up. Come back to me.” She said those words in a tone she had used only with her infrequent lovers, a soft whisper inaudible to the inferior hearing of humans, but he did not respond. 

_Why did you stay, Armitage?_ Phasma wondered, _you could have escaped more than once._ She closed her eyes as the answer arrived to her. “You love him, don’t you?” she asked him aloud. “Ben. That’s why he loved you so much that he tried to save you.” 

_Will you come back for him, if he asked you to?_ she wondered again, thought to the dozen or so cuts across Ben’s forearms climbing from wrist to elbow like the rungs of a ladder, evidence of a love that provoked self-sacrifice. There was no harm in trying, was there?

***

Ben lay curled up under the narrow bunk in his cell, his knees drawn up to his broad chest as he huddled in the scratchy wool blanket he had been provided. The flooring was linoleum over concrete, and it was uncomfortable, but this was a kind of discomfort Ben had become used to a long time ago. 

The cuts on his forearms itched fiercely under the bandages, and the sensation only reminded him of the velvet softness of Hux’s tongue, hot breath and sticky blood, tender lips tracing the paths of his wounds until they healed. _He’s dying,_ Ben thought, and his flinched as his mind recoiled from the guilt he felt. _I let Snoke use him up, like he had the others. I would have just thrown him away afterwards._ But Hux had been different from the others. 

The other vampires Ben had abducted had spat in his face, issued useless threats at him when they realized he would not bend. They had hated him to the very last drop of their lives, and Ben had been glad to see them go. It was an eat-or-be-eaten world, and it was far better to serve a great predator than be prey to the petty hungers all around him. 

Ben fought a sob rising from deep within him as he remembered how he had tested Hux. He had known about the tally marks Hux had left on the wall under his bed, had known when Hux had kept the small folding knife. And yet Hux had not betrayed him with either. He wanted to flee, but he had wanted Ben to come with him, and it was Ben’s own misplaced trust in Snoke that had doomed Hux. Had doomed them both, really. 

There was the soft scrape of a sole on the floor outside his cell, the quiet clearing of a throat. The noise was intentional. Most vampires could move very quietly if they wanted to. Ben rolled over on the cold floor to face the bars in front of his cell. There before him stood a vampire he recognized, but did not know. She had been present, a silent witness during one or two interrogation sessions. The hate in her gaze was eloquent, the trammeled rage in every line of her body. She had known Hux, Ben had thought, had been sure that she had loved him too. 

Ben did not speak. Instead he looked away from her face, stared down at his gnawed fingernails instead of facing the terrifying loss and hurt in her eyes. _Is he dead?_ Ben thought, _Is she here to tell me Hux has died?_

“You wanted to see him,” she said coolly, evenly, her pale face still in the gloom like a plaster death-mask. 

“Yeah,” said Ben, unsure of what else to say. He wanted to see Hux, but was also terrified of doing so. He would face the direct consequences of his actions and inaction, and he wasn’t sure if he could bear the shame of it. 

“Why?” she asked, and she was silent as Ben tried to formulate his answer. 

“I — “ Ben shivered against the linoleum, adjusted the blanket for more warmth. “It’s my fault he’s — he’s sick.” _Dying_ , the cruel part of his mind reminded him. “I just want to tell him I’m sorry, before it’s too late.” 

A sigh from the other side of the bars, the woman’s red-painted lips parted slightly, and the hardness in her face and posture began to crack. “It might already be too late,” she said, her voice wavering with repressed sorrow, and Ben realized that she was on the verge of tears, had been since she had made her presence known to him, perhaps even before. 

Fear bloomed in Ben’s chest, flared bright. “Hux hasn’t died, has he?” he made himself ask, forced himself to look into the brightness of this vampire woman’s eyes. They were pale, reflecting what little light there was in the room, shimmering like moonstones under the red glaze of bloodied tears welling up in them.

“Not yet,” she said, “but his chances aren’t good.” Ben shut his eyes against her words, flinched physically as she punched a code in the locked door of his cell, afraid of what she was going to do, investigation or no. She stepped into his cell and shut the door behind her, waited for it to lock automatically before she crossed the short distance to his bunk. She wore sensible boots zippered up the side, the suede muddied up to the hems of her trousers.

“What do you want with me?” Ben asked her as she leaned down to take his wrist in a cold, hard grip. He felt the bones in his wrist grind under her hand and half-crawled out from under the bunk so she wouldn’t just dislocate his elbow. All the old reflexes were screaming at him. _She’s going to kill you, and she’s going to take her time,_ his mind screamed. _I deserve it if she does,_ he told himself as he made himself move, _she loves Hux too._

Ben blinked in surprise as she let him straighten up to his full height, shivered in fear when he realized she had let go of his wrist. Now she had both her hands free, which meant that he had to watch them both. “I want you to go with me to the hospital,” she said, trembling with the effort of controlling her emotions. “I want you to go there with me and call Hux back.” 

***

Nobody tried to stop Phasma as she spirited Ben out of the lockup, which struck her as something too good to be happening to her at this point in her existence, and she was therefore not surprised when she found Krennic waiting for her by the fire escape door she had planned to use on her way out. The alarm didn’t work, hadn’t for a decade. Staff, human and vampire alike, had used it as a quick exit for smoke breaks during that span, and it was therefore an excellent escape hatch.

“Phasma,” Krennic said entirely too reasonably, “you’re not going to execute him, are you? I’m fairly sure you’d have done that the moment you entered his cell, if you were going to.” 

“No,” she said, oddly abashed at his lack of anger, “I’m not.” Ben remained silent in front of her, but she kept her hand closed on his shoulder, could easily break his neck if she wished to. Something prickled on the palms of her hands, sweat, perhaps, as the hairs on the back of her neck rose unbidden.

Krennic sighed, tapped a cigarette out on a pack he had in his shirt pocket and something _clicked_ in Phasma’s vision, like the shutter of a camera closing and opening. Something was not entirely right. She heard a soft scrape behind her, realized that someone had now come to hem her in from behind. A mortal. Someone whose sweat she could smell layered under musty clothing and damp air. Someone who smelled like they had spent a lot of time underground. _Of course. That’s one of Snoke’s pets, which means that Hux was fucked this whole time. We would never have found him if Ben hadn’t made that break for it, and Krennic could have muddied the investigation every time we got too close. All the formalities are observed. The investigation happens. Hux never shows back up, and no-one’s the wiser about Snoke._

“Personally,” Krennic said, “it’d have been neater if you did.” He sighed and stuck the unlit cigarette in his mouth. 

“That’s what’s going in your report after you shoot me, right?” Phasma asked him. She did not tense when she felt a cool touch of _something_ upon the nape of her neck. She had not frozen when the half-breed she had killed had come for her after killing her compatriots. She would not flinch now.

“Probably,” said Krennic. “I wish it hadn’t been you, though. I’ve always liked you. Come here, kid,” he continued, nodding at Ben, “you’re safe now.” He sounded truly regretful, which sent a spike of bitter amusement through Phasma’s gut.

“No,” Ben said shakily, and Phasma read the expansion of his chest, the shift in the set of his shoulders. A mortal wasn’t about to win any knock-down drag-down fights with a vampire, but Ben’s height and breadth meant that he was going to be hard to take down with a minimum of fuss, if he had anything to say about it. 

“She’s going to kill you after she’s done with you, you know?” Krennic sighed. He reached for his lighter, put his thumb on the wheel as though to flick it, but did not. 

“Who’s to say you won’t kill me after you’re done with her?” Ben asked, and Phasma let go of his shoulder then. It would be better for her to have him on her side if this came to blows, and that was hopefully how Krennic was going to go. Phasma wasn’t quick enough to dodge bullets, old and skilled as she was, not if the person behind her were armed with a firearm. A silver bullet would kill her easily. But if they came armed with a blade instead — she was fairly sure she could last long enough in a fight to at least push past Krennic to open the door and let Ben out into the night. 

“I won’t kill you, kid. I promise,” Krennic said, his voice low, wheedling. He had caught Ben’s gaze with his own pale blue eyes, and they gleamed faintly in the low light. Mesmerism, Phasma realized. It wasn’t actually capable of subsuming a mortal’s will entirely, not for any length of time, but it could daze them, leave them easily suggestible. It was a trick she could do herself, if she wanted, but it wasn’t going to be reliable pitted against another vampire’s skills like that. Not especially when Ben had already succumbed to Krennic’s gaze

“Don’t look at him, Ben,” Phasma warned, fairly sure it was already too late. Ben shuffled forward on one foot, and then another. Phasma could see his shoulders slackening as he stepped out of her reach to walk up to Krennic. “ _Don’t,_ ” she repeated uselessly, again before Ben burst into movement. 

Phasma responded the only way she could in this situation, which was to reach up and behind and take her assailant by the forearm. The movements were smooth, automatic from all her nights of training and practice, pure muscle memory. Krennic made a choking sound as Ben managed to get his cuffed hands around his throat, and then there was the dry cracking sound of bone breaking as Phasma ruthlessly disarmed her opponent with a vicious twist. Something fell from their grasp and bounced on the floor, cold and heavy. _A gun._

Phasma hooked a foot behind her opponent’s ankle and tripped them to the floor, stomped hard, breaking their knee before she dropped to retrieve the pistol herself. It was a dull, mundane little thing, a pre-war Colt Woodsman with a plastic soda bottle taped to the barrel. You couldn’t aim the thing properly with it modified so, but the soda bottle full of packing peanuts was an effective one-shot suppressor. Something a hitman, or in this case, a feral elder vampire’s pet assassin, would use.

“Loaded with silver, huh?” Phasma breathed, and then stomped down on the assassin again, breaking several fingers and carpal bones beneath the heel of her boot. She didn’t have much time to aim, not with Ben digging his heels into the hard concrete floor, trying to hold his ground as he tried to choke Krennic out with the chain that joined the cuffs around his wrists. “Don’t you fucking move,” Phasma shouted, putting some of her _will_ into that shout. The human behind her stopped fighting her for a second, and that was enough time for her to hold the pistol up and shoot Krennic in the mouth. 

Ben was breathing hard, bleeding under his bandages as he let Krennic’s body drop to the floor. Flecks of gore speckled his the fabric of his t-shirt, his pale face, and he spat once, twice as he leaned heavily against the wall. Phasma checked the magazine of the little .22 pistol, found it empty. It had been loaded with only one shot, which made sense with its jury-rigged one-shot suppressor, and she let it drop uselessly to the floor. 

“I didn’t know you knew how to resist mesmerism,” Phasma said to Ben as she opened the door for him, let him out in front of her. 

“Is that what it was?” he asked, shaking as the emotional shock began to kick in, and Phasma took charge then, grabbing him by the upper arm and dragging him across the back parking lot to her car. 

“It was, yeah.” Phasma put Ben in the front passenger seat and uncuffed his wrists before she put the keys in the ignition. 

“The firs- first vampire that owned me, he used it a lot,” Ben said, and Phasma had to reach across him to grab at his seatbelt, pushed its buckle into his shaking hand so he could fasten it properly. “It kinda stopped working after a while. Not that it helped, though.” 

“It did tonight,” Phasma said as she began to pull out of the parking lot, leaving a trail of rubber behind her, “it’s the only reason we’re both not dead right now.” 

***

_Hux? Are you there?_

A voice in his head, like the many he had forgotten by this point. Vivid dreams had splashed across the inside of his skull and then dissipated like smoke, their hues growing fainter and paler as this non-time had stretched on. There was a scent growing stronger on his dry palate, salt and iron and musk, a unique strength that spread slowly across his tongue. 

_It’s me, Ben,_ came the voice again. _I’m sorry I let Snoke hurt you. I’m sorry I failed you._ Hux tried to will himself closer to that voice, but could not. It was as though his body no longer obeyed his thoughts. 

_God damn it, Hux,_ came another voice, low and calm over an intense anger, _I just went through a fuckton of trouble to get him here, you had better wake up._

_I love you, Hux. I love you. So does she. Please don’t leave us._ Another splash of heat across his tongue, and something clicked drily in his throat as he tried to swallow. More blood flowed into his mouth, hot and pungent with life, and its moisture made it easier to swallow properly. 

_He’s drinking,_ one of the voices said, _I think he is. Should I give him more?_

 _Don’t make yourself pass out,_ the other said, _you were already down half a pint when we brought you in._

_I’ve lost more before, it’s okay._ Another hot mouthful, and this time Hux could not help swallowing it down, could not fight the desperate hunger that awoke within him. There was pain, so much pain as he began to inhabit the boundaries of his body again, as his mind rejoined the silver branches of his nerves. It was like the pain of frostbite after cold, or the sharp stab of circulation after numbness, and the blood that began to fill his shrunken stomach was hot, scaldingly so against his meager flesh. 

“Hux.” Hux fought to open his eyes a crack, saw two indistinct faces hovering over his. He wanted to say something, but his voice did not work. Something hot fell across his face, ran down his cheek, cooling rapidly as it did. Ben, Hux realized, Ben was leaning over him, bleeding into his mouth, and that was a tear that had just run down his face. 

“Thank fuck,” Hux heard someone say, “I had to shoot Krennic to get Ben here, and I will be really pissed-off if you decide to die right here and now.” _Phasma._ There was a tension in her voice that revealed tears, which were very uncharacteristic of her. Cold fingers closed carefully around his left hand, a touch that he found comforting and familiar

 _What?_ Hux mouthed, coughed, retched weakly as he registered a tube in his throat. 

“Long fucking story,” Phasma said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you more after you wake up.”


End file.
